I am a very sick man.
Unfortunately, it's not the kind of disease that can be cleared up with a vaccine. Or carefully excised from my body by a skilled surgeon. It's a crippling disorder that I've been suffering from since I was a little kid. It went into remission for several years back in the 2000s, but lately, this perfidious disease has been coming back to life deep inside me. And I'm finding that it's easier to let it consume me than it is to fight it.
Oh, I'm sorry. I just realized that, based on what I wrote there, you might think I've got cancer. Or Covid. Or herpes, or something.
No, I suffer from an illness far more insidious: collecting.
Collecting. The "C-word” for geeks. That insane compulsive desire to obtain and retain stuff. To assemble complete sets of things. To surround oneself with a vast, comprehensive array of worthless crap.
But there's a secondary symptom that collectors suffer from, one that's even more difficult for the average person to understand. A symptom that can actually create more stress over time in the collector's mind and heart than the primal, primary need to "collect 'em all".
And that symptom is organizing.
Did you see the movie High Fidelity? John Cusack and Jack White played guys who ran a small independent record store. Not only were they insufferably snobbish in their musical tastes, they were slaves to their need to constantly categorize and recategorize their voluminous collections of vinyl. They ordered their records chronologically. Alphabetically. By individual girlfriend eras, even! They couldn't leave their shelves of LPs alone for any extended period of time. There was this weird urge inside them to roll up their sleeves and dig into their physical horde. They just had to.
And I have to admit... I have the same aggravating, sad need. My comic books are organized by title, chronologically. My movies are ordered alphabetically, but I have sections that are character- or director-specific. For instance, all the James Bond films are filed under "J", and all of Stanley Kubrick's movies are grouped together in a section under "K". My book-books are arranged, oddly enough, more by how they look on the shelf than any numerical or alphabetical system. Chalk that one up to my interior designer wife's influence. "Form over function, you misanthrope!", she yells at me constantly.
But when it comes to my music collection... oh boy. Freud would have locked himself in a rubber room and thrown away the key after just an hour of observing me as I manipulate my music collection like a vengeful puppet master. In today's digital world, it is pathetically easy to combine songs and albums and artists in an almost endless variety of ways. The one-two punch of portable digital players and the playlist, have given music nuts like me the tools to waste endless amounts of time.
My main obsession is my series of playlists that honor my favorite songs per year since 1980, when I started high school. Then there are years that I’ve subdivided by "Don Era": high school, college, first post-college job, etc. And it gets worse! Some of those years are split in two, because one Don Era ended and a new Don Era began during that twelve-month span. For example, 1984 is split between high school and college. 1995 is split between North Carolina and California.
But wait... there's more! Because inside those playlists, I've done my best to order the songs chronologically by the time of year that I first heard them. The playlist for the first half of 1984 ends with Thomas Dolby's "Hyperactive!", the last song that mattered during my senior year of high school. The tune that kicks off the playlist for the second half of 1984 is the first one that knocked my socks off in college, A Flock Of Seagulls' "The More You Live, The More You Love". (A song which will be featured in a future installment, so stay tuned, faithful fans!)
See? It's a sickness! It's madness! It's sheer futility! And I've been doing it since I got my first iPod back in 2003. Over the last decade I've done my own High Fidelity-style reorganization to my digital collection many, many, many times. Each year, each genre, each band even, has gotten a reevaluation, based on my mood or state of mind.
Is this anal retentive behavior detrimental? Or is it actually okay? I'm sure if he were to analyze me, esteemed psychiatrist Dr. Niles Crane would determine that even a soupçon of innocent frivolity can quell the most Brobdingnagian of existential maelstroms. To which his brother Frasier would reply with a snarky comment about the pedigree of Niles' seventeenth century French fainting couch. Then Daphne, Martin and I would sit back with a cold can of Ballentine and watch the verbal barbs fly like the Visigoth's arrows at the sacking of Rome. Wait a minute... what?!? (Oh man... I've been watching waaaay too much TV during the lockdown...) Anyway, mucking around with my music makes me happy. And I'm better off for it.
And that brings us to now. Well, actually, to pre-now. To last year. 2020. Not the best of years for the world, or the country, or me personally... but at least there were some bright spots. Luckily, I stumbled across a few tunes that put a smile on my face, and they made their way into my 2020 playlist. So I thought I'd shake up my usual formatting nonsense and redirect my malignantly narcissistic ramblings towards some of the bands and songs that got me through a year of utter chaos. No order (for once) to these tunes... just one music fan sharing his collection with another.
GUIDED BY VOICES - "Queen Parking Lot" (from the album Surrender Your Poppy Field)
If you're not familiar with Guided By Voices (or "GBV", as those of us in the know refer to them), then there's an argument to be made that you're not really a fan of music. GBV is the main songwriting outlet for Robert Pollard, the mad genius of the indie pop song art form. Since 1987's Sandbox, Pollard has been responsible for over one hundred albums with GBV and his various side projects. (I have each and every one.) It's quite possible that, when all is said and done, Pollard will have been more prolific than Prince. Every GBV album is different, and yet they're also very much the same: a collection of fully-formed songs, rambling experiments, and sixty-second pop nuggets that don't need more than one perfect verse and chorus to rock your world. "Queen Parking Lot" is quintessential GBV indie rock/pop goodness. To my ears, it sits in the same vaunted realm as "Game Of Pricks", "Chasing Heather Crazy", and "My Valuable Hunting Knife".
HATCHIE - "Obsessed" (from the album Keepsake)
I had been aware of Hatchie (Australian multi-instrumentalist Harriette Pilbeam) from various articles and reviews I'd read over the last couple of years, but honestly I'd never heard a single note of any of her songs. It was a casual click on the video embedded in a review for "Obsessed" that roped me in. You'd swear you're listening to an outtake from the Sundays with the opening guitar chords. But then the syncopated drums and the soft strings kick in, and you're in a whole new world. With her breathy vocals and multi-layered harmonies, you could draw comparisons to CHVRCHES or early Mazzy Star, but those similarities are only superficial. She puts an amazingly economic amount of ringing guitars in all the right places, complementing the keyboards without obscuring them. "Obsessed" is one of those songs I love listening to when I'm on a long drive at night. It sets a languid, comforting mood. I'm so glad I discovered Hatchie this year. I can't wait to see what she has in store for us next.
CORNERSHOP - "No Rock Save In Roll" (from the album England Is A Garden)
I've been obsessed with Tjinder Singh's and Ben Ayres' perfectly-crafted Bollywood-infused pop-rock since "Brimful Of Asha" lit up the charts back in 1997. Because they take their bloody sweet time between releases, any new Cornershop single or album is a treat that I devour eagerly. "No Rock Save In Roll" continues Tjinder's musical love affair with... well, with music itself. He distills a lifelong love of (and an encyclopedic knowledge of) British and Indian pop into a mesmerizing swirl of hooks and beats and Hindi that you can't help but tap your toes to. And damn, does he know how to write a chorus! The only bad thing about getting a new album from Cornershop in 2020? Now I may have to wait until 2023 for the next one.
LEES OF MEMORY - "Lonely Everywhere" (from the album Moon Shot)
Founded by John Davis of indie rock superstars Superdrag, Lees Of Memory was initially a chance for Davis to flex his substantial musical chops in a different direction: namely, the buzzy drone of shoegaze-inspired dream pop. And with Lees' first album, he succeeded admirably. Over the last few years, though, it seems like he's wanted to scratch his Superdrag itch a little more, so the Lees songs have gently curved back into Davis' sweet spot of indie rock and power pop. Which - and I cannot stress this enough - is not a bad thing at all! "Lonely Everywhere" is almost vintage Superdrag, with its easy-going yet powerful tempo and sing-along-til-you're-hoarse chorus (a Davis trademark). This song could have easily been slotted into their 1998 opus Head Trip In Every Key (another album I'll be tackling in the months to come) without missing a beat. No matter what band he's fronting, John Davis never fails to come up with the goods. Keep 'em coming, please!
MILLY - "Star Thistle Blossom" (digital single)
Although I'm presenting these songs in no real order, I do have to admit that this was my favorite song of all of 2020. The genre of shoegaze has slowly changed over the three decades since My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, becoming a wider umbrella that covers dream pop, melodic noise pop, and any of the heavier bands that comprise what's referred to as "nu-gaze". To me, this song lands right on the cusp of classic shoegaze and the grunge-lite sound of Hum’s first album. It's got the buzzing guitars. It's got the dreamy vocals. It's got the wistful, I-want-more ending. There's nothing fancy or revolutionary about "Star Thistle Blossom". But there doesn't have to be! When the laconic first verse slams into that multi-guitar, multi-vocal chorus... Bliss! It's absolute perfection. I hope a full-length album is coming soon, because I desperately need more of this kind of music in my life. (Kudos to the band for finding a way to create a video with an actual story in these pandemic-rife times.)
There were other songs I enjoyed in 2020. Morrissey's "What Kind Of People Live In These Houses?", "The Wall & I" by Nation Of Language, and "Cherry Chapstick" - an oldie from Yo La Tengo back in 2000 - all made my list. (And there was one really big disappointment musically for me in 2020, but I'm reluctant to mention it, because I dearly love the artist and his band, and I don't want to pile on. He takes enough heat for just being him.)
Me at 3 chilling with my first record collection.
And with that... the slate has been cleared for the new year. What will I fill my 2021 playlist with? Let's see... There will probably be a couple of new Guided By Voices albums released before the year ends. Maybe Bob Mould will grace us with another collection of tunes. There's an indie band called Ducks Unlimited who released an EP back in 2019, and I'm hoping they have more on the way. CHVRCHES and Alvvays are overdue for new albums. Ride has been pretty prolific since they reformed. There's so much goodness that could happen!
With regards to reissues, there are rumors out there that the next Prince super deluxe edition (SDE) will be 1991's Diamonds & Pearls. (I'd rather have Around The World In A Day, but as long as there's Vault material I've never heard, I'll take what I can get.) An expanded edition of Howard Jones' last studio album, 1992's In The Running, is apparently in the works. Billy Corgan has been teasing an SDE of Smashing Pumpkins' 2000 MACHINA for well over a year now. And fans hope that super-producer Steven Wilson might get his remixing hands on Tears For Fears' 1993 Elemental or Ultravox's 1981 Rage In Eden.
Any or all of those treasures would find a very happy place on my shelves. Or in my playlists. I can see it as plain as day: Arranging box sets and CD jewel cases by group. Reading through the included booklets and liner notes. Shuffling MP3s between playlists. Editing the titles and artwork to conform to my own personal organizational standard. Spending hours doing nothing important. Lost in the glory of noodling around with my music. Ignoring my wife and pets and friends and hygiene.
Dear God, I am a very sick man.
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and struggling amateur screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.