The Sort...

I think I've only ever bought music as a download twice in my life. Both times were motivated by attempting to help keep a certain Mr Cowell from the christmas number one. So from this scene you may be able to deduce, I'm still of the physical media persuasion. I don't have any pragmatic reason why I prefer to buy the CD, it certainly isn't any sort of sound quality preference or moral stance, I just never got out the habit.

I've just recently realised that there is one advantage to physical media that digital downloads can never have. The ritual of the sort.

Now I realise that this may not be to everyone's taste but I do really like to give things order and the pinnacle of them inordering activities in my life is record sort. When Bethany and Ewan were younger, they went through a phase of taking my perfectly ordered CDs, putting them in their trolleys and bags, taking them upstairs and storing them in cupboards and drawers. I essentially gave up on the ordered state.

As the kids have left my music alone for the last 6 months our so, I went about eradicating the entropy of my record collection back to my personal favourite indexing system. My records are now back sorted alphabetically by geographic region. I have a Scottish section, rest of Britain section and Outwith the British Isles section. If I'm looking for Sonic Youth, I go to S under the Outwith section. Charlatans are under C in the Rest of GB section and Eugene Kelly it's under K in the Scottish section.

Another plus that the physical media has as a result of the sort was that I happened across some records I hadn't heard in donkeys so it took me on a wee musical journey of rediscovery.

There was some interesting* dilemmas cropped up in the process. Ice Cube, I or C? Do you file a solo career next to a previous band membership?

Bonus point section: It sort of looks like these are in reverse order. Anybody like to postulate as to why?


*Interesting to me anyway.