Please know me…

My brief time on Facebook (3 weeks at the time of this writing) has made me realize that I really need to get my list together.

Facebook is an environment that promotes brevity if not succinctness, and the preferred method of quick self-expression would appear to be the top five list, followed closely by brief questionnaires that quickly associate us with some cultural icon representing our true self. “If this were a parallel fantasy-adventure life you would be Gandalf!”

We’ve done this before in any number of ways. The mix tape comes to mind. A collection of music we assemble and bestow, that cannot help but profoundly move the recipient. Maybe the mix will impress with its originality, or maybe it will open a window into the deepest emotional and spiritual underpinnings of our profound self. Well OK, that might be a bit much. But the mix tape (or CD), takes a little more work to put together than the one-offs provided by Facebook and no matter what music we assemble, what we’re hoping to say with it is, “There is more to me than meets the eye. This music is helping me communicate that.”

Our Facebook lists are quickie mix tapes and they serve to place us, to locate us, at some discernible point in the cultural landscape. Our lists say, “This is how I’m like you, this is how I’m not like you, but mostly this is how I’m like you.”

I’m not suggesting that we Facebook users actually consider these lists to define us in any very meaningful way. I’m suggesting that they represent a meta discourse that translates to “Please know me.”

And on that note, here’s a list.

I decided to make a list of albums that were special enough for whatever reason, that I played them over and over, start to finish, in some cases until the original vinyl wore out. I thought this would be a relatively short list, but as it grew, I found it necessary to enforce some additional qualifications. Only albums that I would still play over and over upon returning to them now made the cut. I played Head East’s Flat As A Pancake hundreds of times back in ‘75 but to my ears it has not aged well. Not on the list. Also, this is a list of albums that I played in their entirety on most occasions. The albums you play so many times that years later when you hear a song from them on the radio you remember which song comes next. Hundreds (thousands?) of individual tracks that would make any number of my favorite playlists are not here. The albums are ordered (roughly) by release dates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s when I was listening to them. I was one year and 15 days away from being born when Kind Of Blue came out.