The Nearly Man

I nearly bought a couple of box sets of CDs today - nearly but, in the end, I didn't. This has been happening to me a lot lately. Which is good. Over the years since 1985 when I bought my first CD, "Thursday Afternoon" by Brian Eno, which had been recorded specifically for the CD medium (it's one continuous piece which lasts for 61 minutes) [Therefore I had to switch from vinyl to CD otherwise I couldn't own this latest work by my hero Mr Eno] I have spent far too much on CDs and have amassed a frankly huge collection of the things - truly, I am addicted.

This morning I'd been listening to "Music For The Spanish Kings" a 2Cd set of 15th and 16th Century Spanish Music and, in particular that of Antonio de Cabezon (1510-66) played by Jordi Savall's early music group - and been impressed. So later, while in HMV browsing through their latest "Biggest Ever Sale/Clearout" which they now seem to have every couple of months, I found an 8 CD Box by the very same band - all for a paltry £15. However, both the CDs in the 2CD set I'd been listening to this morning were included - and so I decided not to buy - £15 for 6CDs...still a bargain - but there was that little voice in my head again "you'll never listen to this".

The other non-purchased box was an 8CD box of the complete String Quartets (and indeed Quintets) of Mr Mozart. Perusing the handily left-lying-around guide to stonking classical CDs, I noted the particcular recordings in my hand were not included - and so I once again decided to keep my plastic in my wallet.

Perhaps one reason I'm not buying as much is that the card I usually use has just been reissued to me in chip and pin form and I just can't quite remember the pin number sufficiently well to be confident of using without being arrested as an identity thief...

Of course not buying CDs does not mean that my collection does not continue to grow, as I generally copy every CD I borrow from the music library - I'm sure the majority of their customers do.

One thing I've not been very sure of over the years is downloading MP3s, as the software usually seems to bring along with it a load of other programmes which clog up the computer - however, I recently downloaded Morpheus (the free version of course) to do some very select downloading - the problem now is that my choices of tracks are so obscure that, of the 15 billion people using peer to peer systems at any one time, only one has the song I want, and they always seem to shut their computer down just when I'm half way thru downloading their file...ah the pleasures of the internet.