Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Mon, 14 Dec 1992 15:03:32 EST
From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
Subject: The Day the Music Died (IV): Collections

So there I was, a new grad student with a pocket full of debts with no stereo
to my name and no Bloomington radio station with the slightest idea of what
good rock sounded like.  I mean, we're talking the biggest hits like "Kung Fu
Fighting" & BTO in general--that's a pretty far cry from Blind Faith, old
Airplane, King Crimson, Spirit, the Band, et al.  I mean, this is music waste-
land, folks.

That's on the one hand.  On the other is the IU music factory, compleat with
music mausoleum (looking like a giant toilet bowl, but with acoustics and
sight lines to die for.  A strange place, the MAC).  A concert every night of
the week, just about.  The recital hall booked solid from 10am to 10 pm every
day of the year.  Snatches of really intense stuff floating out of massed
practice rooms any time of the day or night.  Amateurs holding forth in the
lounges of every dorm with a piano.  *And it's all FREE!*  My first six weeks
at IU I heard composers I never knew ever lived; I damn near OD'd on good
music.  (I also had the schedule that dreams are made of:  1 Wednesday after-
noon and 2 Thursday afternoon seminars & that is *it* for classes.)

So when rock left me, I didn't even wave bye-bye.  Too busy listening to
Bach & the boys.  A year or two later was the Second Coming of disco (how many
times has disco arrived, now?  I can count three without trying.) & I had even
less reason to keep track of rock.  Oh, I'd hear the odd song or two that
sounded ok, but even if I wanted to follow up on some group's sound, what was
the point w/o a turntable?  (Remember boys and girls:  the Walkman hadn't been
invented yet.  Heck, the only Honda car still looked like Matchbox replica toy
& would seat about as many people.)

As it turned out, once I got out and on my own, a stereo was one of my first
big ticket purchases after the bank account got healthy.  But by then, it was
Bach & Vivaldi & Scarlatti & Telemann--always Telemann--& Sammartini & Corelli
&--well, you get the picture.  I mean, these Baroque guys could write music
like nobody's business & it was all there sitting in the store for me to truck
home and devour.  I went on a 10 year binge--and let me tell ya, I *loved*
boxed Baroque sets.  Heck, all the Bach harpsichord concertos in one 5 album
box?  All the chamber music on 8 discs?  I mean, is this a deal or what?

The point is, that I was only peripherally aware of what had happened to rock
in the meantime.  Not clueless.  But not vitally involved.  Till I began to
listen to the oldies stations as they sprang up in the mid-80s.  I was sur-
prised at the things I could remember w/o knowing where I had run into them in
the past. . . almost as surprised as at the things I was hearing for the first
time (*these* are oldies?  Say what?).  The net effect was to jumble up all
music as if someone had yanked out the supporting timeline & collapsed all the
events on top of each other:  all the music I was listening to became
contemporaneous, as if Bach & the Beatles had become next door neighbors, or
Morley and Morrison were trading licks.

Of course, I began to yearn for some of the music I had listened to but hadn't
picked up on for one reason or another in the past:  early Beatles, various
singles by the Beach Boys, the Stones' =Their Satanic Majestys' Request=,
Buffalo Springfield, etc. ad inf.  And as I began to put together mix tapes,
it occurred to me that a number of songs I wanted weren't on singles at all.
But they were on collections, by gum.  The more I thought about it, the more
sense it made.  Why wade through half a dozen albums panning for gold, when
one album would hit at 90% or more?  I mean, I felt no great need to scavenge
for flecks and crumbs of great music I might have missed--I was already up to
my earlobes in great music I had missed 300 years ago.  All music was happening
at the same time, so. . . .  Why not 70 minutes worth of the Who, or the Cars,
or Supertramp, or any other group you can name?  In the back of my head is
still the kid that had to trade 3 hours in the hot Georgia sun for 30 minutes
worth of music & had to make every one of those minutes golden.  And what a
savings in time, to boot!  Of course, I couldn't get *every* song I remembered
that way, but I could get enough.

And so, as the '80s gave way to the '90s, there I was, methodically gathering
up the essence of the music of the last 20 years or so, retiring to my lair to
suck it out in peace:  a musical vampire if you will. . . (-:
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