Just listen to it already

This past week, I bought Chuck Berry's Chess selection, the two-disc treatment of Pavement's Crooked Rain Crooked Rain and Coldplay's new album. All are going in my iPod. And I hate to say it, but I'm afraid that I'm not going to listen to either of these front-to-back for awhile. The Chuck Berry and Pavement purchases were steals (both got super cheap used). Coldplay was deeply discounted.

Next week comes the dual-disc release of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville masterpiece along with the new Sigur Ros album. There's so much music that is now readily available and so many great review sites that you can't help but think about picking up an album that gets a '10' from Popmatters, a 9.4 from Pitchfork or an 'A' from The Daily Vault.

What's worse, is the allure of the iPod 30GB. I have it filled to the gills and I'm having trouble finding which five of the 200-so albums on the iPod should get the ax. One of the four discs from the James Brown or Velvet Underground box sets? Hell no - those are disc sets for a reason. a hip-hop CD? No, because I'd need to replace the deleted hip-hop CD with another hip-hop CD.

I remember when a 20-disc jacket was like a gift from the gods when it came to having music to listen to driving around. Now - if my 30 GB iPod is close to being packed, I'm becoming twitchy. At work, one of my greatest pleasures is exchaning a daily shuffle list with one of my friends. Nothing like hearing John Coltrane, followed by the GZA, followed by Elliott Smith, followed by some sampling from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, followed by....you get the idea.

What I would like/need to do is go back to how I lived when I was 15: total immersion of a new purchase. Thus, I will try to do the following for every new album I buy:

• listen to it fully at least twice
• write a review of it