I listen to them, of course. This seems not quite enough. There's a point where this sammlung, while not really mine per se, is unique to me, says quite a lot about me. Music is a method of self-expression for me even though I don't make it, the same way talking about the TV shows I like is a method of self-expression. What we love is who we are.
And for the most part I don't get to talk about it with other people. I can't even say "hey you should listen to this" because the basic context is absent.
One of the things I've started doing, and have done more as my desktop is out of commission and all I can really work with are my music files, is making theme mixes. More than any of Dylan's other work, I was blown away by "Theme Time Radio Hour". It was a virtuosic display of a particular form of mastery, of having songs embedded in one's very being, and ever since then I've been trying to imitate him.
Imitation is the sincerest form of originality, because we fail. I can't do the kind of stuff Dylan does because I didn't grow up in Minnesota in the 1950s and spend years stealing everybody else's records. I wasn't in that record store in New York in the 1960s to pick up that Bobby Pauneto boogaloo record.
But over the course of my life, I've done lots of other things, have my own stock of crazy collector stories, and I've heard things Dylan hasn't, such as music made after 1970 - it's never so awkward as when Dylan's doing a radio show and he suddenly goes into an Arctic Monkeys song. It's not a world he belongs in. He's more comfortable doing a triple album of standards.
Putting together an hour of music is a creative act and also a test. I wind up disappointed when I try to do a mix and it's all '70s rock songs by white men. There are a lot of great '70s rock songs by white men, and I know most of them, but that knowledge is, to my mind, both banal and insufficient. I also get disappointed when I put a 15 minute song in there. It feels like cheating, because it is, because it fucks up the flow. The kitchen show is a great example of that. I couldn't have excluded "Music to Wash Dishes By", but I could have edited it. Should have. The fact is I can't think of an hour of songs about kitchen appliances and utensils off the top of my head. I have a show of DEVO covers waiting for seven more minutes of great tunes. God knows how long it'll wait. The Beatles cover project has, I can't even recall, two or three Beatles originals I can't find sufficiently good covers of, even after having cheated and subbed in Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" for Sun King. I don't rush it. Completion is an arbitrary state anyway.
But there's those moments where it comes together, it flows, even if nobody else is going to listen or hear what I hear I know it's good. Segueing "Don't Turn the Light Off" by the Churchills into "Don't Turn The Light On, Leave Me Alone". Putting together an hour of music about Egypt that has approximately one Egyptian and no "Walk Like An Egyptian", what adds up cumulatively to some of the most offensive stereotyping imaginable, and yet the music is great. Finding three ridiculous musical sketches that imitate door-knocking, all of which sound completely different from each other. Fun, serendipitous, easier than writing.
I don't really have a place for them. I was doing a webcast but it's offline for now. I'm too old to adapt to stuff like Mixcloud and especially to adapt to the weird copyright intricacies. Youtube playists aren't much because a lot of the stuff in my library is Too Obscure for Youtube, and streaming services are even more hopeless. Maybe eventually I'll put up playlists for some of the shows. Having some external signifiers of a thing is almost more interesting to me than a thing itself. I'd rather watch an incomplete press kit video promoting Microbee computers than actually try to do anything with a Microbee.
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