Last night I bit the bullet and put our fine CD collection into alphabetical order. I am aware that makes me a geek of the highest order but, really, I wanted to find the CDs I was looking for and the alphabet is a useful invention for such sortings. I didn’t quite go as far as the main protagonist of High Fidelity and organise them into chronological order of when I discovered which band. That would have taken a good deal longer than the 2 hours of alphabetising that went on last night. It would also have been too hard to incorporate Husbandface’s contribution to the collection into that method, I never discovered Blue, it’s a measure of my love for him that Blue is allowed to stay in the collection. (He did also contribute some good albums I promise, before you judge too quickly).

I did rediscover some gems, renewed my love of Bruce Springsteen, shook my head over the varying quality of the last few REM albums, was glad I didn’t update all the Queen albums from cassette to CD and delighted in anticipating some reunions with old friends.  If I was of the sort to make grand sweeping promises I’d probably vow to blog about rediscovered album each week. You never know, I might manage one or two a month from the back catalogue.  On the player as I write is a genius collection of covers of Johnny Cash, fascinating to have such familiar songs reworked and re-imagined, no-one can beat the gravely voice of the Man in Black but it’s fun listening to people try, or ignore imitation completely and take the songs in a whole new direction.

I know I’m meant to be downloading songs from the internetski now, I know I’m not meant to care that HMV is on the way out of our lives, I know that it’s all about mp3s now but I can’t stop caring about the product. There is still something deep within me that loves the thrill of buying a CD, getting it home and pressing play. Something satisfying about looking at long lines of CDs on our shelves.  I’ll hold onto that pleasure as long as I can.