I'm one of those people who really enjoys music. I like listening to it. I like reading about it, talking about it, sharing it with people, seeing it performed live, and can even play a little bit myself. And though I have a lot of interests outside of music, it seems that I could almost PUT music to every of those things. Because of this, songs have a regular space in my life.
Like most folks these days, I have an Ipod. I really didn't use it very much until I started running last year. I'm more of an album guy myself, and it seems like Itunes and mp3's are more geared toward individual songs. Because my Ipod is relatively small at only two gigs, I found I didn't have a lot of room for many whole albums. And because I tend to listen really intently and repeatedly to the things I have, I'm extremely familiar with my record collection... from the popular tunes to the deep tracks to the outtakes even. As a result, I found myself wanting to constantly change the storage on my mp3 player. After a while, it got kind of tedious so I started making mixes of individual artists to listen to. After enjoying those for a bit, I decided to make a huge mix of songs from my entire cd collection. I had recently converted all of those albums to digital files, so I made a new folder called "Gregg's Favs" and starting copying certain selections into it.
There was a bit of method to the madness. What should I pick? The things I liked? Do I ignore the cliche, radio-friendly numbers that I can hear anytime I tune into a station, or do I pick the things that I'd never hear anywhere... even if that means ignoring some of the hugely famous and popular songs that I too enjoy? And who was going to be listening to this mix? Just me, or would I play these songs for my wife or plug this in for a party or a house full of guests? Should I tailor some of my choices with an audience in mind?
At first I thought I'd take one song from every artist in my collection. As I started doing that, however, I thought, "I have over thirty original albums by Bob Dylan, but only four from Ben Kweller. Should they really get the same number of selections for my playlist?" So after giving every artist their due, I started going back and pulling multiple songs from the more prolific performers. I was sure to give cd's that I barely even listened to any more their just due as well. There had to have been a reason I owned them, or wanted them once, so they would be represented too. Over the months, the total number of selections kept getting bigger until I got to the nice even number where I am today: 300.
Listening to it once it was all done was fantastic. There was such a range of material. Some songs got my heart pumping while others had lyrics that made me pause. Some brought back memories from long ago while others enabled me to tell my sons, "Now THIS is a song!" The Ipod arranged the tracks in alphabetical order. I never knew what was coming next. And though I've never listened to all 300 songs back to back, I have enjoyed whole letters before. Sometimes I'd think, "The C's are really good," and then later I think the T's were a pretty powerful group. Considering it all now, it's not just a collection of enjoyable music to listen to, it's also a reflection of me.
Enjoy the list. I hope to comment on the tunes, the artists, share some reminisces or some other related info. Let's begin...
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