An old friend of mine has a list of books he wants to buy. It’s very long and he is very disciplined (so he tells me), so when he goes into a bookshop and sees something else he wants, something that isn’t on his list, he doesn’t buy it, as anyone else would. No, he writes down the title of the book on a piece of paper, goes home, adds it to the bottom of his ‘master list’ and when the book reaches the top of his ‘master list’, he goes out and buys it, even though, by this time, the book is long out of print and he has in fact died of old age.
So obviously I mock him relentlessly, as is only appropriate with your oldest friends. But I seem to be reaching a similar point with CDs. The list of the ones I want is getting longer, the space in which to store them is contracting, and the years in which to listen to them…well, I’d rather not think about that right now. Like many people, I have so much music I quite like, but never enough that makes the heart race and the tears well up. So the search goes on, the endless mythic quest for the next great record. What you are really looking for are the musicians who understand this, because they themselves are trying to make the next great record. Unlike many bands (including some of the biggest in the world), they haven’t yet settled for just doing what they do as well as they can. So we keep listening to these people, and we buy their new records as soon as they come out, because their quest turns out to be our quest too.
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