» What’s it all about and why bother?
Nick Hornby was one of the first authors to claim that men like compiling lists. Two of his books illustrate this point: “High Fidelity”, which deals with the trauma, troubles and tribulations of male-female relationships, and “Fever Pitch”, which deals with the same problems caused by following a football team. The former lists girlfriends and the latter football matches. Hornby also wrote a book called “31 songs”, which lists songs meaning a lot to him (but not to many other people, I fear). The idea, therefore, of listing songs which mean a lot to their owner is not a new one. The magnitude of my task, however, is much more daunting: my list contains all 600 LPs I have purchased over a 40-year period. The whole project began as a whimsical pastime on a bus in Cyprus when the initial idea was a modest one – to list my top 100 LPs in no particular order. On returning home, the plan developed into the full-blooded, obsession-driven idea of archiving my complete collection in order of quality and then placing all CDs in the same physical order as they are represented on the list. And now it has been developed even further into the book you now find in your hand, on your lap or wherever else you put a book when you read it. Although the CDs represent LPs purchased since 1970, they all originate from the birth of the CD – which for me was in 1986. Since 1989, 99% of my vinyl collection from 1970 to 1986 has been lingering in the cellars and bedrooms of two personages who play no further part in my life and the chances of my retrieving them are negligible. Since that time the vast majority of those vinyl LPs have been purchased in CD form. 600 CDs now parade themselves in my living room as a monument to 40 years of loving music. On the back cover of Hornby’s book “31 songs”, Tim Lott of the Evening Standard writes that the book “… is about Hornby, and us, and about being alive.” Replace “Hornby” by “Deane” and you’ve got