Cataloging

My musical quest continues. At my current position, I've gone through the vast majority of my own collection and have put a sizeable dent in my wife's when it comes to loading them onto the iPod. The current length, if playing every song until they were all played once, hovers at just under 40 days of music. Theoretically, I could ride out The Flood. Well, the flooding part. Not so much the floodED part. I might have to hear a song more than once, may God have mercy upon me. I was a bit worried, though, because a lot of stuff that I consider to be essential, along with some stuff that isn't, was MIA until late last night. As it stood, I was going to be without Soundgarden (not to be confused with Savage Garden...gah...my wife scares me sometimes...*shiver*...) and the MTV Unplugged disc was my only Nirvana. I still had AiC to up the Seattle count, but From the Muddy Banks... was unaccounted for and there's a lot of good Cobain stuff on there. Live tracks, no less. I'm considering the amount of work involved in creating a Live Tracks playlist, among others, and it would be hurting without some Heartshaped Box. Beyond that, I was also missing Jars of Clay's Much Afraid and a couple Beatles CDs. There may have been a logic to placing all those in the same case, the one that was hidden until last night, but it escapes me now.

They'll have to wait until I finish my wife's collection, which should take only an hour or two more. That's helped by the fact that, even though I'm endeavoring to load most everything on, there are certain things I will not abide. Savage Garden being one. I don't remember seeing any in her stacks, but if it is, it's getting bypassed.

My wife doesn't see the point in all the effort I'm going to get it ALL loaded on, but I think she'll appreciate it the next time we have to iPod it across the country to Idaho. I mean, not having to lug a CD case of the things we thought we might want to listen to, having it jammed in the front seat, taking up precious real estate, these all appeal to me greatly. Even if I have to have The Dixie Chicks on there.

Yeah, I managed to let them pass my crap filter. I don't feel good about it, but I did.

I've been lying to her, though, about how I just need to finish loading them, because unless we want to listen to them shuffled randomly or sorted by artist, album or whatever, there's no appreciable way to hear what I want to hear in groups. I mean, REALLY the way I want to hear it. Smartlists are fine, but somehow my Sinatra CD got into the 90's list I have going. That was a strange one.

It occurs to me that the Seinfeld CD is probably in there, too.

The problem with playlists, like mixtapes, is that they're just snapshots. Now, I'm not going to wax poetic on the subject, Cusack did that well enough, but finding a way to meaningfully divide music in a way that will remain relevant in the coming days, weeks, months, whatever...you know, when I'll actually be listening to it...seems daunting. I mean, it's not permanent like a tatoo (I had a hard time with that one...), but the active time committment of wading through thousands of songs to piece together a list (versus the passive time committment of loading them in the first place) is serious business. On the upside, I won't be dominating the DSL by that point (I should've put a wireless router on my Christmas list...).

By the by, if anyone knows of a way I can import cover art for the CDs iTunes couldn't find art for, I'd love to hear about it.

I suppose that, really, the playlisting is something I should consider a work in progress. I mean, I really don't need to become obsessed with that after I finish this.

Who would've known that taking my music into the 21st century would be so much work?