This weekend, I am moving into a spare room in an apartment in Astoria, Queens, which - after nine years of living alone in a studio apartment - might as well be a desert island.
I planned to put most of my stuff in storage, and give the rest away, a purging process that has been more than difficult. When choosing what to keep and bring with me, I thought it might be nice to bring my remaining vinyl records and my stereo rack system with turntable. I liked the idea of playing records in Queens, alone in my room, desolate, lonely, longing.
But still, I couldn't put all of my CDs in storage. After 13 years of working in the music industry, and having inherited my father's penchant for record-shopping, I've got a lot of CDs. So I allowed myself to cherry-pick the few discs that I absolutely cannot live without, for however long I will be in that month-to-month living situation in Queens while I look for a job (or a life) elsewhere.
I figured I'd take about 30 discs with me.
I ended up choosing over twice as many as that.
Here they are, in no particular order:
- Air: The Virgin Suicides Original Score
- Original Soundtrack: The Virgin Suicides
- Electric Light Orchestra & Olivia Newton-John: Xanadu Original Soundtrack
- Carly Simon: The Best of Carly Simon
- Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
- Bananarama: The Greatest Hits Collection
- Nicole Atkins: Neptune City
- David Bowie: Young Americans
- Fleetwood Mac: Greatest Hits (only because I have Rumours and Fleetwood Mac on vinyl)
- Cat Power: The Greatest (which is not a greatest hits)
- Cocteau Twins: Heaven or Las Vegas
- Chicago: The Very Best of Chicago: Only the Beginning
- Ry Cooder & Manuel Galban: Mambo Sinuendo
- Counting Crows: August and Everything After
- Roxy Music: Avalon
- Crowded House: Recurring Dream: The Very Best Of
- Sheryl Crow: The Very Best Of
- Destiny's Child: #1s
- Duffy: Rockferry
- Nick Drake: Pink Moon
- The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits
- Easy Star All-Stars: Dub Side of the Moon
- Feist: Let It Die
- The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
- George Michael: Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1
- George Michael: Twentyfive
- Van Morrison: Astral Weeks
- Van Morrison: Moondance
- John Coltrane: Blue Train
- The Cure: Disintegration
- Journey: Greatest Hits
- Sade: The Best of Sade
- Prince: The Hits 1 & 2
- Dusty Springfield: Dusty in Memphis
- Mary Margaret O'Hara: Miss America
- Donna Summer: On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II
- Texas: White on Blonde
- Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
- U2: The Joshua Tree
- Dirty Dancing & More Dirty Dancing: Original Soundtrack
- 50 First Dates: Original Soundtrack
- Stevie Wonder: The Definitive Collection
- Eddie Vedder: Into the Wild Original Soundtrack
- David Gray: Draw the Line
- David Gray: White Ladder
- Al Green: The Belle Album (somewhat of a dark horse in his discog but I love it)
- Sophie B. Hawkins: Tongues and Tails (I refuse to be embarrassed over this)
- Billy Idol: Greatest Hits
- Icehouse: Man of Colours
- Icehouse: Masterfile
- Chris Isaak: The Baja Sessions
- Chris Isaak: Forever Blue
- Various Artists: Chronic-les
- Various Artists: Conquer the World: The Lost Soul of Philadelphia International Records
- Various Artists: The Sound of Philadelphia: Gamble & Huff's Greatest Hits
- Various Artists: Black Power
- Various Artists: Stax of Wax!
- Various Artists: Funk Soul Athems
- Various Artists: Body + Soul The 70s, 24 Sensual Grooves
- Various Artists: After Hours (a 2-disc downtempo electronica compilation I produced for Razor & Tie, which bombed)
- Various Artists: Atomic Funk (a 2-disc compilation I produced for Razor & Tie that actually did pretty well)
- Various Artists: Can U Dig? (another 2-disc comp for R&T that tanked)
- Various Artists: Easy 70s (a 2-disc comp for R&T)
- Various Artists: The Easy Rock Collection (an 8-disc box set I helped put together and that I have sold on QVC for nearly two years)
- Bad Company: The Original Bad Company Anthology
- Bob Seger: Greatest Hits
- Various Artists: Ranking Miss P Presents: Sweet Harmony (43 classic reggae vocal gems)
- Various Artists: Let's Do Rocksteady
- Various Artists: Love's a Real Thing: World Psychedelic Classics 3
It broke my heart to leave other excellent CDs behind, ones I love to travel with, ones I simply must hear when the urge hits me. And what I choose this week - in my current mental state - may change dramatically from what I might choose a month from now. I wouldn't put it past myself to crawl into my storage unit with a box cutter later this fall and go digging around for my Bee Gees' greatest hits.
But for now, these discs will be the soundtrack for the next few months in transition, in a new borough, a new bedroom, with a new roommate, when I can't sleep without crying or can't sleep at all, and I feel like the only person in my own little world...