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One of life's little complications that technology has introduced is the process of choosing songs for compilation CDs. Now that nearly every computer in America has a CD burner, you just can't help but throw a bunch of your favorite songs together. Granted, people have been making mixed tapes for years, but mixed CDs are just that much cooler. Some people go the MP3 player route and don't even worry about burning CDs, but that doesn't work for my car. I know they make MP3 players for cars, but I don't think they've quite caught on yet.
I realized a few months ago that pretty much all of the CDs I had bought since I graduated from college had only been listened to a few times. In college, music was a very big part of my life. Some people watch TV while they study or do homework; I listened to music. Some people chugged Mountain Dew to keep them awake for hours of non-stop programming or working on projects for my electrical engineering classes; I chugged Mountain Dew and listened to music.
In college, I didn't spend a whole lot of time in my car, except for the occasional trip home, and of course the ever-sacred road trip. Road trips are an entirely different animal all-together and probably deserve their own discussion.
Things have changed completely since I entered the real world. There's really no equivalent of studying now, and I'm not about to start solving differential equations just so I have an excuse to listen to some music. But now I have almost an hour each day on my commute, plus trips to Huntsville about once a month. As long as I've been working, I've listened to the radio instead of CDs while driving to and from work. I can't really explain the exact reason behind that, except that listening to the radio gives you some sense of connection with the world. As useless as the weather report usually is, I like to hear it on the way to work. I like to hear the traffic reports, although I almost never change my route based on it, since I don't have many viable options other than I-65.
Of course, another possible reason is that I'm really lazy and the same couple of CDs are always the only ones in my car.
So anyway, I realized that I wasn't listening to CDs very much now that I'm in the real world, but I was still buying just as many (if not more) than I did while I was in college. I'm one of those people for whom CDs become almost a collector's item; there are very few artists that I don't own all of their CDs. If I like an artist, I'm going to want to own every single one they've ever made, although fortunately for my wallet I haven't applied this to Michael W. Smith or Steven Curtis Chapman, as that would instantly bankrupt me.
Now that I have a computer with a ridiculously huge 80 gig hard drive, I've been MP3-ing all of my new CDs and listening to those while I play on the computer or on days while I work from home. So thanks to that, the music actually does get listened to.
I don't like keeping store-bought CDs in my car. Not that I think my Saturn is going to be stolen, but you never know. But moreso than that, the CDs in my car are much more likely to get scratched than any others, so I have a policy of only having burned CDs in my car. This is where the compilation CDs come in.
I don't have very many true compilation CDs made, as I have a really hard time deciding which songs to put on them. I know that once I have made said CD, it's going to be listened to like a million times, so I want to make sure I get it right. Right now I'm working on picking out songs for the next installment of my instant-classic "Ricky's Songs" series. I generally don't want to have more than one song from the same artist on there. Sometimes I try to have all faster songs, all slower songs, all praise songs, etc., and other times I try to mix it up.
My other favorite kind of compilation to make is all of my favorite songs by a particular group/artist. It seems every group in the world now has an actual greatest hits album, and someone came up with the bright idea of adding an original song or two so that the dedicated fan just HAS to buy it. But this way I can conrol exactly what songs are on there. My Third Day compilation CD (appropriately titled "Consuming Fire") is probably my best.
So now I'm working on my next in the Ricky's Songs line. It's not finished, but at the moment the list has:
"I Can Only Imagine", Mercy Me
"Hands of the Potter", Caedmon's Call
"Marvelous Light", Derek Webb
"No More Faith", Andrew Peterson
"Revolution", Jars of Clay
"High Noon", Andrew Peterson
"Creed", Third Day
"Ocean Floor", Audio Adrenaline
"No Greater Love", Rachel Lampa
"Hold Me Jesus", Rich Mullins
Also ahead: the formidable test of putting together a Best of Caedmon's Call CD. This one's been floating around in my head for years; it's almost like I'm scared to decide which songs to put on there. They're pretty much my favorite group, and to narrow all of their songs down to the 16 or 17 that will usually fit on a CD is going to be difficult. On these single-group compilations, I normally pick out the best 3-4 songs from each of their CDs.
So there you have it, more than you ever wanted to know about compilation CDs and how they affect my life.