The ABC Project, or "We Interrupt This Rant"

Some years ago, on a night like many other nights, my wife and I were sitting in our apartment in Brooklyn listening to music. At that time, it was probably “OK Computer”. Somehow, we got to talking on the subject of space. Not space in the universal “oh my, space is so infinite and we’re just specks of galaxial dust” sense…nothing that philosophical, I assure you. We were talking about storage space, and about how we had run out of it. We were living in a 650 square foot apartment with a dog, a cat, and approximately 800 square feet of stuff. A rough estimate, eroded by memory, says that about 200 square feet of that stuff was taken up by our cd collection. At the time, we had roughly 1500 cds. A single jewel case measures 5 and ½ inches by 4 and 7/8 inches by ¾ inches, or 20.10 square inches, or 209 square feet (or 17 cubic feet).

Needless to say, the little bastards were spilling out all over the place. And we were hard pressed to find a solution. So we decided to live with it.

Where we went from there took us to even higher forms of mathematical observation. We started talking about making a concerted effort to listen to every single cd we owned. 1500 cds, at an average of about 45 minutes per, equals something like 1,125 hours. If we spent three hours every available evening listening to music we calculated we could get through the entire collection in about a year. We figured it was do-able and set about setting some kind of listening standard, or ground rules. By the time we finished negotiating just how many Jethro Tull albums she would have to endure, the dog needed to go out to pee. Then we figured, while we were out we should get cigarettes and coffee, and then I think we ran into a neighbor and got to talking, by which time we forgot the whole thing….

Some years later…or now…we live in a big enough house that we no longer have such storage issues. But we do have a young son, he’s 10 months old and we think he really loves music. He reacts certain ways to certain music, and with both of us being musicians we think that there may be some kind of genetic hanky-panky going on. We don’t entertain crazy-parent thoughts of him being some kind of prodigy or anything – we would be happy if he grew up thinking Radiohead and Pearl Jam were cool at one time…and Doves…and Neil Young…and Flaming Lips…and Muddy Waters…and maybe Dream Theater if I can get the kid alone for a week.

Which brings me here.

I’m on vacation this week and my wife is not. So, I’m alone at home with our young son and since I’m the only one in the house tall enough (at least until Mommy gets home) to reach the controls for the cd player, I decide what we listen to. I started thinking though, how it would be unfair to subject him only to music that I favored. Although I favor just about everything in our collection, there are some things on the cd wall that I always automatically bypass. And I started thinking, again, that I might be depriving our son of a particular song or album that might, I don’t know, inspire him to great things – musically or otherwise. Think of it, thirty years from now, our son develops a cure for cancer and terrorism! And all because when he was a little baby, his little baby brain absorbed “Solar Marmalade” by The Bevis Frond – and that music swirled around in his subconscious for years and years, re-arranging and re-jiggering itself until it took the form of chemical and mathematical equations. And those equations came to him during the writing of his doctorate on “possible uses of cancer as a terror weapon”. And those same equations, yes those same darn equations, turned out not only to be the cure for all cancer, but also a musical notation that, when played, would disable the part of the brain that wants to commit terrorist acts.

So in the spirit of ensuring that my son fulfills his destiny and saves all of mankind, I am, this week, subjecting him to our entire cd collection in alphabetical order, taking extraordinary measures to guarantee he doesn’t nap through The Bevis Frond.

Now, I certainly don’t expect to get through the entire collection in one week. As a matter of fact, as I write this, we are into day 4 and have only just finished listening to Bjork’s “Medulla” album. So, yeah, this will have to be a long-term project that could literally take years. But, in order to somehow expedite the process – so that maybe we’ll be listening to Frank Zappa by my son’s second birthday – I’ve re-visited the original ground rules set by my wife and I when we first concocted this really stupid plan.

THE ABC’s OF MUSICAL EDUCATION PROJECT, APRIL 2005
Ground Rules:

- The collection must be listened to in alphabetical order by artist
- Mix CDs, artist compilations and multi-artist compilations are off the table with the following exceptions:

>If the compilation represents a cultural touchstone or genre whose importance almost supercedes the artists who made the music, like the Stax-Volt box set.
>If the compilation represents the only available choice for a particular artist – for instance in our case we have The Style Council boxed-set but no other Style Council cds.
>Only one cd of a boxed-set is necessary to satisfy the requirement.
>If a single-artist compilation represents the only listenable output from said artist, the compilation is acceptable to meet the requirement. This rule would have come in handy BEFORE we spun Blue Oyster Cult’s “Curse of the Hidden Mirror”, and instead had opted for disc one of “Workshop of the Telescopes."
>Only one-cd of a single-artist compilation is necessary to satisfy the requirement.

- For artists in which more than one disc is available, a single selection will satisfy the requirement for that artist (this is known as the “Jethro Tull rule.") The selection can be made one of several ways:

>When it comes to an artist like the Beatles, for instance, it is impossible to pick one album that accurately represents what they contributed to music and pop-culture. Basically, when in doubt, go with “Sgt. Pepper.” Same with Pink Floyd – lots of great albums but “Dark Side…” is the way to go.
>For artists with a slightly lessened influence, a good rule is to pick an album that is least familiar.

Addendum - May 11, 2005: If the album that is least familiar is known to be crap, said album can be traded-up for a not-so-crappy album. This is heretofore known as the "Big Country Addendum."

- To preserve time, “two-fers” – those cds which are compilations of multiple albums on a single cd (Big Star, Gram Parsons, and the Beach Boys labels have all released these kinds of compilations) – can be half-listened to so that only one of the represented albums is aired.
- Live albums are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
- Newly acquired cds are automatically entered into the eligible collection under the aforementioned rules.

>Newly acquired cds can be aired immediately regardless of their place in the order. Ergo, it not necessary to wait until "F" is reached before listening to the new Flaming Lips cd.
>Newly acquired cds that fall into the collection at a past point should be aired immediately. This also holds true for “found cds.” Found cds are the ones that have been in the car under the passenger seat for a year…”hey look what I found! It’s the Bangles Greatest Hits!”

So, we began the great experiment on April 25, 2005. The basic process is that we just keep loading up the changer with the next successive batch and when we've listened all the way through (even as background music) we repeat the process. I’m keeping a “listening diary” of the daily airings. That can be found here. It’s going to be an interesting process, I think. At the very least, it will be a good way to listen to hundreds of albums that I never really got around to hearing thoroughly. But most importantly, it will give my son some kind of a basis on which to form his own musical tastes, instead of just being exposed to whatever mommy and daddy want to listen to.

Cheers.