I'm finding these cover CDs from Word magazine one of the less enjoyable series in Music Arcades. For me, they're one of the least satisfying means of discovering new music. The artists I like in this case — Sharon Jones, Plant & Krauss, The Clientele — are all ones I'd already arrived at by other routes before the CD came out last November.
"Well, David," you might say, "You don't have to listen to the CDs; you could just enjoy the magazine and the podcast, and forget the CDs." Ah, but that's just it, you see. That's part of the reason why I set out to make my way listening through every CD, record, pre-recorded cassette or mini-disc in the house. Because otherwise what do you do with these things? Throw them away? Give them to friends, who probably have all the CDs they want without taking your cast-offs as well? Or just let them pile up in the corner?
The last of these options was what I was doing, but they all seem like such a waste. What a travesty to let CDs go unlistened to when there's a chance that just one of them might contain an undiscovered gem.
So I determined to make my way through the whole blessed lot, taking the chaff with the wheat, and trying to maintain a good humour as I do so.
Oh, and speaking of good humour (!), I do recommend the Word podcast. A couple of weeks ago, there was the amusing sound of David Hepworth criticising one of the members of Neon Neon (the American one, to be fair) for proclaiming that Barack Obama had "changed the psyche of America...the world!" Hepworth felt that musicians should not deign to pass judgement on matters beyond their qualifications. I enjoy the broad range of topics that David Hepworth's covers on his blog, and marvel if he has certificates in all of them. His contribution to the Obama chat managed dextrously to weave Bruce Springsteen into the discussion — a topic on which his credentials are copper-bottomed.
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