So I'm hardly the first to do this sort of project, and I'm obligated to list a few influences. First, my very good friend Jeff once tackled his own CD (!) collection about ten years ago over the course of a summer. Sadly, I won't get to hear any Coolio like Jeff did, but I'm keeping Jeff's policy of no omissions. For whatever reason, I loaded all my old CDs (which I started buying in seventh grade) on my current computer, so I've got such touchstones as the first Bush album to absorb. Ouch.
The other big influence was Noel Murray's "Popless" feature for the AV Club, which ran in 2008. Here's the first entry:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/hearing-loss-a-popless-preview,10238/
http://www.avclub.com/search/?submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Search&q=popless
Murray had loftier goals than me -
"My goal for 2008 is to pick my way through all the music I've acquired over the years, in roughly alphabetical order, and figure out why I have it, whether I still like it, and if it needs to be a part of my life ongoing. I'm closing down for a while in order to take stock. "
- and a bigger, more respectable collection. But his feature was part of why I began revisiting all of my music each year, so credit where credit's due, etc. I suppose my goals actually are roughly the same - if nothing else, I'm forcing myself to reassess the desire to continually add to my music collection when so much of it's unfamiliar to me or simply forgotten. If there's a bit of self-reflection along the way, then so be it. I'm not planning on giving critical reviews about the significance (or not) of a particular album; rather, I'm curious how all this stuff got on my hard drive, how much of it's actually listenable, and what might have led to it being accumulated in the first place. It's kinda like cleaning out the basement and finding lost treasures. Or just crap I didn't know I had.
Also, here's the track that inspired the title to this post - revisited during the "A" albums:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVEaWW31kDk
I was just mocked at the Comet for admitting how much I loved Pennywise in high school by a Bad Religion fan and a former Saves The Day fan. Seems fair.