I have many thousands of songs in my music collection.  Many of them used to be in my garage, but eventually, I recorded every one of the CD’s I owned into digital form.  And there it sits.  Gone are the days where I could look through my parents or my siblings LP collection and admire the artwork, asking them what their favorite songs were.

My wife does not have enough patience with my music taste for me to inundate everyone in the car while we are driving.  So my final recourse is to review the music here, artist by artist.  To my way of thinking.  Or, feeling.  Music is so subjective, it’s hard to do anything else but like what you like.

There is some bad crap out there.  Let’s be honest, from Bon Jovi, we get Nickelback.  From Vanilla Ice comes Macklemore.  In those to equations alone, I am sure I lost some of you.  That’s alright though.  My choices for a classic might just seem a little weird to you.  In the immortal words of Cheap Trick, “We’re all alright.”

The project for me is simple: I pick out an artist, give a ranking and quick rundown of their top albums and once again with their top songs.  Some of the lists will be longer than others.  I could go up to 25 songs on a group like Creedence Clearwater Revival, but would struggle to find more than 5 songs of, say, Go West.

If the artists have enough work, I may even throw in a worst of list.  The point is not to condemn work to the obscurity of my indifference or the rancor of my gasbag opinion.  I only want to give anyone curious about my collection (namely my daughters) an idea of who and what I listened to and why.

This may not be a complete list of this musician’s work.  It will be limited to the experiences that I have had in listening to the artist, and what the music means to me.  It’s something to do with the way I feel about it, nothing more.

As for the why, there may be personal stories attached to some of this music.  It could have something or nothing to do with the those who made the song or album.  It is just something that adds to my feelings of the work.  An example of this could be memories of being driven around the town to the sounds of Boz Scaggs’ Lido Shuffle, or walking through actual blueberry fields while singing Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill.

Really all I want from this is contact, so that my girls can find out how much Robert Plant’s Now and Zen affected me and my friend, Steve when we were in High School, or why I will always associate Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl) with my friend Johnna’s mix tape that she gave me before she left on a trip one summer.  These works touched off a lifetime of memories for me, and I want my girls to have similar touching off points as music takes a life of its own for them.

If you get something from this stuff, great.  If you think I am a fool, you won’t be the last.  If I entertain you, I have accomplished more than I ever planned.

Nonetheless, have fun with this, if you can.  I am pretty sure I will.