There Is Editing and Then There Is

Tossing out bits and pieces of your life. Sometimes it's tough to know which is which until you go looking for something you thought for sure you still had. I couldn't have gotten rid of that, right?

Several years ago, in one of my occasional efforts to Edit and Move Forward, I sorted through my many LP's (vinyl records that is, in case "LP" is a mystery to you) with the intention of freeing up some shelf space to accommodate more books. No more bookshelves seemed to be in our immediate future and there were lots of old records I hadn't spun in many a moon. When I was done with my winnowing I had a couple of boxes full, maybe a hundred or so, that I was sure I could do without. I had moved past them, outgrown them, gotten over the, didn't need them anymore.

Well, it was nice to have the extra room for more books, I mean books just keep needing to be acquired, don't they? But the fun of using the credit they got me at Bookman's Entertainment Exchange has long since worn off and every once in a while, when I'm sore in need of a dose of Jethro Tell, Focus, Procol Harum, Yes or even Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, I'm screwed. What was I thinking when I presented the tatooed man behind the counter with my complete Moody Blues collection? Geez, I even traded in my Mahavishnu Orchestra LP's. It's true that a person only needs to hear "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love" maybe every two or three years, but when you need it, you need it and downloading a compressed version off of iTunes just ain't going to do the trick. Besides, it costs ninety-nine cents.

What prompted this particular Geez, I Shoulda Just Bought Another Bookcase on Credit moan? In today's newpaper the full page ad from concert promotion company LiveNation includes upcoming concert dates for Loggins and Messina (Together Again!), Gordon Lightfoot (This Time He'll Be Sober!), Steely Dan (Performing AJA in its entirety), Ian Anderson (Plays the ACOUSTIC Jethro Tull), Little Feat (40th Anniversary Tour), and The Phoenix Symphony Performs the Music of The Doors, with Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger. Yes, you read that last one right.

It all just made me want to crank up the old Dual turntable and listen to an unadulterated analog version of "Thick as a Brick", but I traded that away for the equivalent of fifty cents credit towards a Dean Koontz paperback. Fair trade? Maybe. But I still want my Days of Future Past.