About Music Arcades

What?

Towards the end of 2005 I set out to listen to every record, CD, pre-recorded cassette, mini-disc and music-related CD-ROM in my collection. Music Arcades is the blog of that endeavour, one a day. I began on Winter Solstice 2005 and reached the end five and a half years and 2,035 blog posts later.

The archives are arranged month by month, alphabetically and by decade of release (though these categories are hobbled by limitations of the blogging platform I use, Typepad) and also by some idiosyncratic themes.

As of July 2011, this site is as complete as it's ever going to be.

Why?

I have a big music collection, by most standards. I know some who have collections several times larger — I'm not bragging — but it's still big enough that listening to all of it took over five years. Inevitably that means that some of the less popular items in the collection might never be listened to again. Not only that, but there have been times in my life when I was buying music faster than I could properly listen to and absorb it — so, when I started, I did't really know all that I had and what was good. That cultural surplus felt like an embarrassing waste. I wanted to justify my acquisitiveness by giving everything at least one decent hearing.

Nostalgia? Yup, guilty of that, too. I remember younger days when it was common to sit down and do nothing but listen, except maybe perusing the sleeve notes. Particularly I remember listening with a friend, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and playing our favourite records to each other. "Listen to this bit — this is amazing, because…"

More about this in my opening letter to Ben.

How?

I have a database that lists everything in my collection. Using a random number generator I picked the next items to feature here, usually in groups of five at a time. I listened to them, and then I wrote about them. Not necessarily about how good or bad they are — though inevitably I couldn't resist sharing opinions (sometimes informed, more often not) — but as though I were listening to them with Ben, over an endless stream of coffee and cigarettes. Frequently, what I wrote is littered with personal anecdotes and references that may only mean anything to a handful of people. It's a blog, not a reference guide. Take it as you find it.

Why Music Arcades?

The origins of the name, and some of the inspirations behind the folly of the site, are referred to at the end of this post. Pragmatically, musicarcades.com was available in 2005; not much else was.

Who?

My name is David. Throughout the duration of Music Arcades I lived in London, England, with Lucy and the Boy (born 2008, almost dead centre of this period). If you really want to know more than that, you'll have to do a tiny bit of detective work.