My name is.....and I am a compliationaholic.


I think a compilation of different artists for exercising or driving, homemade with love, care and attention, is a wonderful thing. And so is a good radio station, if there is such a thing any more.

But I am starting to wonder: although it seems I am one of the first to get sucked into buying a newly repackaged, remastered, reprinted liner notes blah blah blah archive of music, it is finally beginning to dawn on me that I NEVER listen to ANY of them.

And given that these collections are hardly cheap, I have probably wasted more money on them than any subset of my CD collection.

The remastered Steely Dan catalogue? I never listen to it. Every Stevie Wonder track ever recorded? I must own at least three collections and I never want to listen to any of them. All of the Bowie singles on 2 CDs? Bores me. Led Zepplin remasters? Same. And these are all artists whose music I love?!?!

However, I will happily listen to Aja, Led Zeppelin II, ChangesoneBowie or Songs in the Key of Life, Electric Ladyland over and over and over again.

Is it just me or is there something nostalgic, something more authentic, and something JUST RIGHT about the original albums, the original order of the tracks, the original way things were intended to be listened to?

Record company compilations of different artists are even worse. I get similarly excited buying a basket of jazz or blues tunes on the Verve label for example. But invariably, once I get past the slick repackaging, the high profile artists on the first or second track, I am deeply disappointed in the content and the rythmn and cadence of the content.

Obviously I am not so cynical to think that this might be a particularly high margin exercise to recycle old material by the record labels, but I just wondered if anyone else ever thought about this.
cwlondon
I also prefer to make my own compilations. I have a acoustic blues, electric blues, women of modern rock, women of jazz, the best of the late 60's -70's, my favorite audiophile recordings, my favorite Mozart pieces, etc. I have an Alesis Masterlink 9600 and it produces excellent red book cd's. I mainly use them for my car, but also enjoy them on my system.
CW,
It seems that you simply need to explore deeper music and dig out something new. There is lots of music I'm sure that you did not explore that already existed a long time ago upto now. It continues to bring new artists new labels and new releases and not only 21st century hop and hip but the real serious rock, progressive rock, punk, jazz, underground... i.e. simply saying the stuff that you might like...

I got bored from Zeppelin, Hendrix a long time ago. Recently I got bored even from King Crimson as well despite this band being dominating over my average album listenings.
Genesis, Yes and ELP are standing firm on my shelves probably collecting some dust and I never looked on them for quite a while. Soon probably I'll sell them but later probably will miss!

It seems to me that I will never get bored from CAN and their members but who knows?

I always appreciate albums more than compilations unless the last contain unreleased tracks or versions.

Have you ever tried to listen to Zappa compilations...? Oh, no this guy albums albums and albums only! Still didn't get bored of him for already more than 16 years of enjoying(i'm not too old)

Step further on your explorations and you'll understand that music is simply endless even without compilationsssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!
Compilations are a great way to check out an artist or a theme, but perhaps best done by checking it out from your local library. It gives you a quick way of checking out an unknown artist's body of work or as an introduction to a new style of music.