C/D: Social visitors perusing your record/CD shelves, more-or-less unasked

Isn't that a Morrissey song?

But, erm, wouldn't you notice?

great for parties...i bought a new huge cd shelf that actually held all of my cds ( i already need another one)...but had a party not long after arranging my cds on it --- strictly alphabetical...tried genres, crashed and burned --- i would say 50% of the party was people talking about music...it was near the stereo and i let anyone be dj, so it was cool to see who was into what...and more importantly how fucked some people's ideas of "party music" are and why they probably shouldn't ever be allowed to be the dj.

It's totally dud on the other hand, if someone looks through my collection and says something along the lines of "Wow. You have a lot of music. You know who I bet you'd like? Jack Johnson!!"

your response: "Yeah, Miles Davis is so amazing."
their response: *slowly backs away*

The other subset is the young metalhead demographic. Often I will become friendly with young'uns through my job and sometimes they will come over. When they see the collection, they generally shit themselves. I don't even think it's that impressive, but whatever.

Actually, there seems to be in every city I've lived in at least one person aged 18-24 who, when I discuss seeing Kreator and Coronor together, or Sanctuary, or Sepultura's first-ever US show (things like that) that they get glazed looks of jealousy on their face.

I don't mind people looking at the collection. Except the vinyl because it's in such lousy shape. I'm embarrassed. :(

-- erklie (erklie50...), March 15th, 2006

Haha. Yes! Problem solved!!

Then again (and I am in no way an obscurist and my collection is somewhere in the 300-400 CD region, so not huge) I always feel bad when I encourage people to do this and it goes wrong. If you're cooking or pouring drinks or looking for corkscrew of whatever and you say "Put some music on! You choose." And they look at everything and then say "I haven't heard of most of it."

I'm afraid I've gotten to the point where they're now scrolling through iTunes rather than looking through actual CDs, but this usually divides in two types of people:

1) the ones who sheepishly opt for something safe that they've actually heard of, even if they know it's starkly inappropriate for the circumstances; or

2) the ones who invariably pick the one with the most eye-catching song or album title, thus often sending shock waves of cataclysmic electronic noise through the apartment (because who wouldn't choose a song called "9V DC Supply with Homemade Copper Solenoid (Unidentified VLF Radio Noise)"?)

"Would you mind taking a moment to peruse my CD shelves?"

-uh, well, you know, they keep making them....

(*Fall, Bowie, Neil Young, etc...)

-- Abbadavid Berman

"No? I see...Well then, I've got a big bowl full of candy, why don't you eat it?"

That's not the problem with putting CDs on in your house - the problem is every time you find something you want to listen to, you open the case and the CD HAS GONE MISSING!

*not a true story.

-- The Boring Machine

That is a problem in my living room. In my bedroom everything is cased, if it has a case. As for downstairs ... I blmae the flatmates.

If you're cooking or pouring drinks or looking for corkscrew of whatever and you say "Put some music on! You choose." And they look at everything and then say "I haven't heard of most of it."

this is not a problem for me as my destiny's child albums constantly float around near the top of the piles. and if they say they don't like dc, i kick them out, problem solved.