Reducing the Clutter: CDs & Concert T’s (WWJD…What Would Jerry Do?)
Recently I wrote a post, a Part II actually: The CD Conundrum: Coasters or Collector’s Items (what to do with my 1,000+ CDs). Not only was it a savvy use of the word ‘conundrum’ in a post title, the resulting conversation proved to be a cathartic exercise well worth taking.
The post was really about two things: my changing music consumption habits and my desire to jettison my physical CD collection. There were a number of comments from faithful 6149′ers on how their own consumption habits are changing (streaming versus buying music is a polarizing topic to say the least). There was also a lot of discussion on what role the physical CD plays now and, if there is a want to shed them, what the hell to do with them all?
The latter subject is the one I want to talk about. It fits in well with a subject I am thinking a lot about right now: “reducing the clutter”. What the hell am I talking about here? Reducing the clutter has been a central theme of my life as of late. My efforts to reduce the clutter has been a success from the big philosophical things to the little bullshit-y things. I’m focusing on what what I am most passionate about and interested in, eliminating unnecessary variables from choice and decisions, changing patterns and getting stuck into the new work I am involved in. That is the big picture stuff. I am cutting a swath through the little bullshit, too…like my CD collection.
The (pending) elimination of my CD collection is not the only physical clutter I am trying to reduce. I have a ridiculous collection of concert T-shirts, too. I haven’t worn some of them in years. Between my moves from Boston to Florida to Sydney, Australia and to London…that is 8+ years of lugging plastic and cloth all over this big ol’ globe. Now that I have potentially solved my CD conundrum, I had to make a move on the T’s. I didn’t want to throw them away…I just couldn’t. Instead, I found a way to, as they say, re-purpose them.
I found this service called UBlanket. You send them 20 of your fave T’s and they turn them into a blanket for you. I looked at a number of other similar services and this seemed to be the best. The cool thing is that you send them the shirts and they take pictures and post them online. You get to crop the design to your satisfaction and then you click and drag your “panel” into the frame and decide the layout of your T’s / blanket.
I was their first international order. Once we sorted out some logistics, my fave Ts were in the mail headed for the chop shop. Once they were posted online, I designed my masterpiece. It should be here within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here is a pic of the design I came up with:
If you are like me and have an unhealthy emotional attachment to Rock & Roll schwag, like concert T’s, that marked seminal moments in your life (and who doesn’t, right?)…Ublanket may be a good option for you.
Funny, as I type this I am wondering if I actually reduced clutter or if I just consolidated it.
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Let’s step into the way-back machine, circa 1987. I was in high school. I had a VHS copy of ”Rolling Stone Magazine 20th Anniversary” special (yes, VHS…this was the 80′s). The video was chock-full of interviews with people from the heyday of the mag back in the 60′s, straight up to the video darlings of the mid 80′s. One of the interviewees was Jerry Garcia. There was one thing Jerry said that struck sparks in my young mind (I am paraphrasing): “we all want to live a clutter free life”. That had an impact on me back then as it does now.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Jerry was revisiting a comment he made many moons ago when Haight Ashbury was alive and well with the Hippie ideal and the freewheeling fever of Fillmore gigs, free will and fucking. He and the rest of the Dead were being interviewed by Harry Reasoner, of CBS…the straight press. Funny…when you watch this, who looks like the real freak? The interviewer or the interviewee? Truly...one man’s normal is another man’s strange.
Here is that video: Harry Reasoner’s The Hippie Temptation. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth the viewing. The Jerry/clutter comment I am referring to happens at 1:20.
Reducing clutter…it makes me think of a song from one of my fave rave albums of the year, ‘Brothers’, by The Black Keys. The name of the song is, “Tighten Up”. Reducing, tightening…yeah, that sounds right. It is a song so fixated in the now, but leans so heavily on influences of the past. It has a deep, sticky, dewey groove with a buzz & fuzz vibe layered on top. I love it. I love the whole damn album. Here is a double-whammy for you: the official video for the track and a live performance on Letterman.
If you have this album and downloaded it…you fucked up. Bite the bullet and go buy it on vinyl. The difference is staggering. If you don’t have it already…and don’t own a record player…don’t be a fuck-up. Bite the barrel and invest in a turntable. Get with it…this is 2010, for Keith’s sake!
