Music

Once again, I’m trying to get stuff organised. This time, it’s my music.

These things that were once so easy are now so very complicated.

I remember clearly the first LP I purchased with my own money. Perhaps I was about 12, or 13, when I asked Mum if I could take my $8 out of the bank to buy a Suzi Quatro LP. Mum very politely said it was my money and I could spend it how I wished. The record was going to cost $8. The fact that my first personal music purchase was going to drain my savings probably says something about the money management skills I then deployed for most of my life.

Unaccompanied, I went to the bank, drew out the money, walked to the music store and purchased. I can still feel the paper money in my hand. It was an important walk, very important.

A month or so ago, my second-hand iPod Classic finally ceased to work. The battery would no longer charge. Rumour has it, I could replace the battery, and maybe I will one day. For now, I’m steadily transferring the music to my phone. It seemed the practical option. I’m up to R.

At some point, two laptops back, I thought it a practical option to keep all my CDs in the iTunes library on a hard drive. It was a lesson learned when I filled up the Nano and then had to rescan them to put on the Classic. A few years passed comfortably until I started to worry that the iTunes on the laptop would cease to support the Classic. So I stopped upgrading iTunes. Then the laptop operating system ceased to be supported.

Now I was in a pickle.

So, the old laptop sits in a corner, always plugged in, ready to scan the next CD I buy. Which is not that often. There’s no connecting to the internet, because there’s no security protection. I scan the CD to the old iTunes, type in the names of the tracks myself and transfer them across to my android phone.

It used to be so simple; $8 worth of simple.

The morning radio announcer mentioned three ARIA winners from the previous evening. I was intrigued and looked them up. For those not in the know, the ARIAs are the Australian Record Industry Association’s annual music awards.

Co-incidentally, my sister was going to be shopping in the neighbouring town where there’s a music store. I texted the names of three albums in the hope that she might be visiting that particular mall. Alas, no, not this time.

Another online order, with one exception; one of the albums was only sold by Amazon. Alas, not ever. My brain was already locked into the idea of three, so a different selection, a familiar name, and the cart was full.

Now I wait.

Of course, I could buy them as downloads but, alas, I still insist on owning the CD.

(And there was that time when I sat the CD on the paper feeder, printed a page and the printer ate the CD.)

I wait.

It’s not quite the same anticipation that accompanied me when I carried that paper money to the shop. It never could be.