I am in the midst of a dilemma.
One of my friends recommended a CD to me. Generally, he has pretty good taste in music, so that’s not the problem. The problem is that the CD in question is Let It Be by The Replacements.
You’re probably wondering why that is the cause of a dilemma. The thing is this. Up until today, when I added this particular album to my iTunes library, I had over 150 albums and 2,000 songs, which could be arranged chronologically (admittedly, with some selective endpoints) in this manner.
1960 – 1969 – 5 albums
1970 – 1979 – 10 albums
1980 – 1988 – 0 albums, 0 songs
1989 – 1999 – 61 albums (can you guess when I started getting into music?)
2000 – present – 65 albums
That’s right, I had zero songs from albums released after 1979 (Pink Floyd – The Wall and Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps) and before 1989 (Nirvana – Bleach, The Cure – Disintegration, and Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine). I had always kind of thought of this as an interesting quirk of my music collection, but I had never gone out of my way to preserve it. But now that I’m faced with ruining that perfect gap in my collection (Let It Be was released in 1984), I find myself a little reluctant to do so.
I won’t fight it though, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Who knows? Maybe this will be the start of a string of albums from the ’80s for me. Any thoughts on what I am missing out on from that decade?
Coil – Horse Rotorvator
Dinosaur Jr – Youre Living All Over Me
Fishbone – Truth and Soul
Gang of Four – Solid Gold
Guy Called Gerald – Automanik
Husker Du – Zen Arcade
Jane’s Addiction – (self titled)
Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking
Meat Puppets – II
Meat Puppets – Up on the Sun
Pixies – Doolittle
Pretenders – (self titled)
REM – Murmur
Replacements – Tim
Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
Sonic Youth – Evol
Sonic Youth – Sister
Soundgarden – Ultramega OK
Sugarcubes – Life’s Too Good
X – Wild Gift
Elvis Costello – Get Happy!
Elvis Costello – Imperial Bedroom
Feelies – Crazy Rhythyms
Giant Sand – Long Stem Rant
Mekons – Rock and Roll
Mekons – Fear and Whiskey
Paul Simon – Graceland
Pogues – Rum, Sodemy, and the Lash
Pretenders – Pretenders II
Pretenders – Learning to Crawl
REM – Reckoning
Stone Roses – Stone Roses
Syd Straw – Surprise
This Mortal Coil – It’ll End in Tears
Violent Femmes – (self titled)
X – Los Angeles
XTC – English Settlement