Too Much Is Not Enough
Today’s title is, as some of you might recognize, a line snatched from the U2 track “Zooropa.” As such, it’s sung “in character”—the sentiment, that is to say, belongs not to Bono, ostensibly, but to his evil leather twin, The Fly.
Whoever’s responsible for the sentiment, I’m here to disagree with it, at least as it applies to music. I have a sinking feeling this is an “age” thing: which is to say, a younger man might well feel very different about this. (So let me hear about it, you younger men & women.) But for me, when it comes to music, I’m beginning to think that too much is too much.
I was put in mind of this when the newest issue of Spin arrived recently; the cover is emblazoned with a white badge that reads, “Need. More. Music. 52 New Albums Reviewed!” My reaction was immediate, and telling: “I don’t need more music! I need more time to listen to the music I have!”
Some of you—well, two or three, anyway—might remember that in college, I unloaded my entire collection of LPs. Why? I came home from the store one day with a new album under my arm, and when I went to file it, I discovered that I already owned it. I felt ashamed of myself; it seemed to suggest, pretty clearly, that I had more music than I ethically knew what to do with. That something had gone terribly wrong.
So a great fire sale in the dorms; I divested myself of everything. I later thought better of it; it was my Mom who disposed of my baseball card collection for me, but I’d gutted my own LP library. I can’t now think about it for too long: makes me wanna holler.
When I started to rebuild my music collection, about ten years later, we’d moved into the era of the CD; I remember that I bought my first CD on a trip to Berkeley. It was Brian Eno’s Another Green World; I bought it at Rasputin Records and—get this—I didn’t even own a CD player yet. I just thought it was so cool, I wanted to have it. I bought the software, trusting that the hardware would materialize in due course. Which it did. To date, I’ve not bought a duplicate CD, even though I’ve got over a thousand of ‘em. I’m not especially worried about double-buying, but the enabling condition is there: I have a hard time finding time to listen to all that I buy. In the age of the iPod, I find this takes a perverse form: I’ll bring CDs home from the store and import them into my iTunes library, but it may be days, weeks, even months before I actually listen to them. Importing stands in, too often, for listening.
So a reasonable man might conclude that I’ve already got more music than I have any obvious use for; my iPod tells me I’ve got 44 days worth of music stored there. That’s at 24 hours a day; if I could even find an hour a day to listen—unlikely unless I were to begin to commute, or something—it would take me three years to get through one rotation. I’ve already got enough music, in other words, to last the rest of my life.
I’m trying to reconcile this though with my studied aversion to curmudgeons—to those who declare that “rock is dead,” and who complacently pretend that there’s nothing worth listening to coming out anymore. I don’t need any more music; but there’s lots of new music coming out that interests me.
I don’t “Need. More. Music”—but, Lord knows, I want it. What I need is more time.
Wow! This is precisely how I feel. I mean precisely. I have this giant wall of CDs (not *quite* as many as you have), but the time I spend listening to them is pretty low. And I experience the same thing with new releases–I buy them but I don’t always listen to them right away. And I ask myself “Why did you just spend $40 on music you aren’t listening to?”
Could it be that our pants are imminently to be rolled? (Hope I got that allusion right.)
I certainly do remember the big LP giveaway of ’77 or whenever it was, and I have long felt *horribly* guilty about it. My memory is that I was one of the less greedy participants, but that is likely self-serving. (He says, asking for absolution.)
Sitting next to my front door at this very minute, in fact, is an envelope containing the one remaining LP that I acquired in this way–”Zuma.” I packaged it up a couple of weeks ago to send to you, but then I thought that might be sort of weird. Now I will send it for sure.
I regret that I don’t have the rest of them to send to you. I know that I had “Before and After Science” and a couple of Roxy Music LPs. Probably some more that I don’t remember. In fact, I thought I still had “Before and After,” but I couldn’t find it. I downsized my vinyl collection some years ago, which I now regret. It got kind of cumbersome to carry around.
Thank you for the opportunity to relieve myself of ancient guilt in a public forum!
For such a cautionary preamble, you unleashed a quite conservative argument. As one of those younger people you entreated to speak up, I feel compelled to say something, but I can’t disagree. Entirely. I, too, need more time. I, too, feel that there is already more music in existence that I want to hear than I could ever listen to, let alone fully digest. I’ve found a lot of this as I’ve gone through my own current blog series on artists who should be inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, but haven’t yet. (I believe you can click on my name in this comment to access my blog and see what I’m talking about over there.) It’s been a great opportunity to delve into the back catalogues of artists I’ve heard much about.
And yet. And yet I need more music. Always. I’m cognizant of the fact that, as I do my own historical inquiring, there are piles of new artists and songs and albums awaiting my return to the contemporary blogosphere. I think that there will always be music to hear that will be new to me, whether it is officially new or not, and I imagine that is the case with you, Kevin.
So I don’t think there’s anything inherently curmudgeonly about your argument, except for the fact that you assume you’re being curmudgeonly. I worry about the opportunity of indulging in my old favorites, but I know that I could never remain satisfied do that for long. You seem to be the same way.