My Ridiculous CD Collection

I started buying records when the family first got a record player in 1971, and was immediately bitten by the record buying bug . It dominated my teenage years, and at university I sought out like minded individuals and widened my horizons. Pop to prog to punk to jazz rock, until eventually I accepted I just like the music that I like, and any attempt to genre everything is silly.  Of course, I have my favourites, my prejudices and my blind spots, as will become clear. By the 1990s, CD had arrived, vinyl was becoming scarcer, and I had to balance a newly developed CD buying habit and a young family. So I made the decision to sell off the vinyl, and use that to fund my habit.  I’ve occasionally regretted it, but looking at the price of vinyl today, I’d be bankrupt by now if I’d stayed in vinyl, while CDs have crashed in price, so I can pick them up as and when I want, often second hand for buttons. Even if I listen as much via streaming / download now, I’m not ready to let my CDs go.

So the rules are simple. I’m going to listen to my CDs (one floor to ceiling 4 foot wide bookcase and two drawers of a chest), and review them. I have the length of the CD to write the review and I might exclude ‘bonus and alternative tracks'. I’ll listen all the way through, unless I really don’t want to and I’ll probably never finish.

If I don’t have it on CD, I won’t review it. I almost certainly will buy some CDs I don’t already have just so I can review them. I make the rules, so that’s OK.

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The rating system is skewed by the fact that I thought I'd like all these CDs enough to buy them, so even quite reasonable albums might only get 2 or 3 stars. Especially 2* - it doesn't mean it's a bad album, it means I was disappointed after parting with money for it. If there aren't many 1 star albums, that's because I chose not to buy most of the albums I'd have rated 1 star. In the end it's my subjective opinion, a bit of fun and a lot of self indulgence.

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My rating system

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5* - an absolute classic that I love with all my heart and will never tire of. Flawless. 

4* - a great album, one I’ll return to again and again, and enjoy always.

3* - a decent effort, with enough of interest that I’ll revisit from time to time.

2* - not actively bad, and one or two good tracks but generally a disappointment.

1* - an absolute stinker, if I haven’t yet binned it, I will. If I’d listened to it before, why didn’t I bin it?*

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* By 'bin it', I mean 'donate it to the charity shop'. I'm not a monster.

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UPDATE: The 400th review was completed on 30/4/2024, fourteen months after the project started.

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• There have been only 18 five star albums, the first ones from the 2000s arriving relatively recently. and 4 one star (consigned to the charity shop)

• The most popular years are 1977  and 1994 with sixteen entries each. However, five of those in 1994 are compilations/live albums released in that year, while all the 1977 were new albums.

• By decade the 1970s and 1990s are still neck and neck with 103 entries each, although of the 1990s over a quarter of these are compilations / live albums from before this decade. The 1970s entries are all recorded in that decade.

There's an index.

Part One (A - G)

Part Two (H - R)

Part Three (S- Z and Various

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