Stuck in the '90s

One of Austin's favourite games is to pull all the CDs off the shelf in the family room in the basement. They're stacked at a height he can reach, because frankly, we don't care if he pulls them off the shelf. It keeps him entertained, and there's very little harm he can do to them -- at least until he learns how to open the cases.

But the other day, as I was restacking the CDs back on the shelf almost as fast as he was pulling them off, I actually took a good look at the collection. And that's when I realized that our music collection was pretty much stuck in the '90s.

I don't know about Ryan, but I bought my first CDs in 1994, around the time that I bought my first CD player. Over the next five to seven years, I bought a lot of CDs. And then Ryan and I moved into together and put our collections together. Suddenly, we had several hundred CDs displayed on a shelf. But soon after, with Napster and other such programs, we (as did many people I'm sure) almost entirely stopped buying.

So a good look at the CD collection today will find some classics (in my opinion), such as all the U2 albums, some REM, Tragically Hip, Dave Matthews Band and Sarah McLachlan, and some, um, laughable albums, such as Dance Mix '95. I still listen to the classics from time to time and well, the others always makes me shake my head and smile.

But what I mean by stuck in the '90s is then there are all the albums by bands that were cool when we were in University. Remember Blink182, or Presidents of the United States of America? Yup, they're on the shelf too. Ask anyone in University today, and they likely will have no idea who you're talking about.

Occassionally, I'll still buy a CD, mainly because I have an old-fashioned idea that I would rather own the CD than own it on my computer. But it has to be a CD of an artist I really like, such as U2, where I know I'll still be listening to it from time to time 10 years from now.

The problem remains is that once Napters and other type free programs disappeared, I almost entirely stopped downloading as well. So my CD collection is stuck somewhere in the 90s and my MP3 collection is stuck somwhere in the middle of 2003.

So, no matter where you look, I'm horribly out of date. At least I'll always have the radio -- although I tend to listen to Jack which is also stuck somewhere, I'm not quite sure where, but it's definitely not 2006. At least my CD collection will soon be updated again -- Sesame Street and Sharon, Lois and Bram never go out of style.