The Seed Is Planted

Earlier today (February 9, 2009) I traveled to Midland, TX to begin a new work assignment. This wouldn't be a big deal, except that I'd been home (on the bench) since the middle of November, 2008. While at home, I had lots of media at my disposal. Sirius, DirecTV, terrestrial radio, etc. I kept some sort of something on in the background most days. Back to Midland. It's quiet in the office I work in. Quiet like a morgue. I fired up my trusty 80GB iPod and asked the question: what to play? I decided to listen to every album on my iPod, in its entirety, in alphabetical order (by album title). I figure this'll take most of a year to accomplish. I've done it once before, about six years ago. I had a friend growing up that used to do it every so often (pre MP3, obviously) - it was easier then, as we had smaller music collections, and more free time. No sooner had I started listening than I felt the need to document what I was listening to, so I decided to put to use the rusty old blogger account I created about three years ago.

I know, a blog is so 5 minutes ago, but I wanted something more permanent than Facebook or Twitter. Something I could look back and laugh at later, much like my high school era "Teen of the Week" clipping from my hometown newspaper. The plan? To spotlight an album or three per day/week/month - whatever I can keep up with. If past performance were indeed a guarantee of future results, well, we can all expect this to peter out in a month or so, four tops. However, I'm going to try to buck the trend and stick with it.

I'm going to set some ground rules as I get started. I must listen in order, with the following exceptions: I can listen to new (purchased since the start of the journey) music whenever. I can listen to other stuff, like Sirius, if I want to. I can listen to other stuff as running accompaniment. I mean, I do have some mellow stuff that would just not be conducive to running, and I also have some terrible stuff that would cause me to want to veer off the sidewalk into traffic (or off the back of the treadmill), just to make it end. I can hear the quotes from the evening news now: Well, I seen him running, then he just hung a left in front of my bus. After I run him over, I stopped the bus, got out, and asked him if he was alright. It was then I heard Poison's Open Up and Say...Ah! streaming from his iPod headphones...