I’m a total music geek.  I’m not alone – our house has some sort of music playing device in every room but one bathroom.  We have CD’s stacked in well, a good number of rooms.  I listen to music at work all day, something that took the people I work with some time to get used to I think.  I must have a soundtrack at all times. 

I drove the same car for over 15 years.  At one point, the cassette player bit it and the radio antenna came unattached, so it was a bit of a black hole, musically.  For Mother’s Day one year, my dear husband got me a macdaddy car stereo that was worth more than the car.  It played mp3 discs, I could hook a thumb drive straight into it and not even bother with burning a cd.  My musical choices when I drove suddenly exploded.  This was good.  And then, last fall, my beloved 1995 Honda Civic needed too much money to keep it on the road.  It just wasn’t worth it anymore.  The new car is a 2001 and has a nice Bosch stereo, with a cassette player and a cd player that doesn’t played burned cd’s, so it’s a wee bit outdated (but nice.  and in good shape).  So while the new car is nice and runs well and has things like working air conditioning, I miss my old stereo. 

Over the years, there are certain albums that have become my personal soundtrack.  I have a tendency to listen to the same album over and over, day in and day out.  There is always a current favorite (right now it’s Jenny & Johnny’s I’m Having Fun Now), but then there are the go-to’s, like Nothing’s Shocking.  Green. The Caution Horses, among others.  Those 3 albums listed I’ve worn out several copies of.  I just burn a new copy and go on with myself.  Not to mention the shows I’ve been to that I like to listen to – Pat went through my ticket stubs and got me every Dead show I ever went to, every Wilco show we’ve been to.  Suddenly, I can’t have these on hand, in my car.  I’m slightly freaking out.

I got an iPod for Christmas.  Yes, I’m slow on the technology.  I haven’t seen that much of a need for it frankly.  I’ve got a boombox or stereo in every room, a decent car stereo….oh wait….

So the iPod has become critical for my musical pleasures in the car.  But this means I have to get organized about what I put on there.  And, it means examining what has been my lazy musical attitude for years.  Maybe it’s time to switch up the ‘standard’ car music.  This means taking out some stuff I’ve kept in the car since high school.  Yes, that long ago.  My dear husband has pledged to help me by telling me if I tell him what I need to have loaded into iTunes so that it can go on my iPod, he’s willing to do it.  However, I’ve realized my iTunes is a mess too.  We had a major computer crash about this time last year and I lost all my playlists.  I don’t even know what all is loaded on my iTunes these days.  Pat will find some new band he thinks I’ll like and load it up for me to discover.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve been attempting to organize my iTunes.  I found several new artists I didn’t know were there.  I got some listening to do…. and I’m pretty sure Edie will applaud this.  We have mother-daughter music disagreements on a daily basis, since I do spend a little bit of time hauling her around.  Apparently I really burnt her out on Band of Horses and She & Him when they were my daily fare.  She’s burnt me out on Arcade Fire and Gorillaz.  Sometimes we have to just listen to radio because it’s the only thing we agree on. 

All in all, I’m excited about changing my approach to music.  It’ll be good for me. After those few warm winter days where I drove around with the sunroof open and realized I really do need REM’s Green in my car, he totally loaded it onto my iPod for me.  He is such a keeper.