MUSIC: ROCK COMPILATION CDs

I rarely, if ever, listen to music in the house. Stupid really as I've a got a neat Bose CD player. But mostly it's on CD in the car or, less often when I'm not using the car but am out and about, on my Ipod. In the last few days while browsing Amazon I came across really cheap multi-disc (usually 3 but one has 5) Rock music compilations starting with  NME Classics: 61 Classic Tracks From The History of the NME which I picked up second hand (around four quid and change including postage). As you'd expect, it's quite eclectic and mostly covers the 70's and 80's. 

I thought this sounded a good idea and ordered a cheapo like new copy of Ultimate Collection: Driving Rock 100 Hits, a 5-disc set. When I came to play it/copy it to my PC, disc 5 turned out to coated with some white stuff and wouldn't (play that is) but it cleaned off okay. (I wonder if I should have sniffed it?) Now as someone who never does anything by halves, I also ordered (this time at only a fiver each through Prime -free postage) Greatest Ever Soft Rock The Definitive Collection (54 tracks) and Latest and Great Guitar Heroes (58 tracks, and included the name of the lead guitarist on the listing which was nice).

So, 212 tracks and a total price that worked out at £1.00 for one hour of music which is pretty good value no matter how you look at it but given that the quality of the music is also pretty high and I only had a grand total of 8 tracks already duplicated in my collection then I really can't complain at all.

Not that I'm going to let that stop me.

Oh, well maybe a tiny carp, a minnow-scule of a criticism but nothing really fishy. 31 of the 212 tracks are duplicated between the four sets, two particular tracks are shared by three of them which works out roughly at about 14%, so I'm really only getting 171 different tracks which I didn't have before. Considering they came from three different labels, that's not such a bad ratio and I wouldn't have not bought them all (probably) if I'd poured over the track listings before ordering. 

As each individual CD has a running time of a minimum of 75 minutes (usually more) that works out at about 19 hours continuous playing time so I'll be listening to them in the car for quite a while. Plus, of the tracks I've heard in the past, there are none I dislike and as for the stuff I haven't I imagine I'll like quite a bit of it and may even lead me to investigate further.  All in all a win-win.

I do still have one on order: Greatest Ever Prog Rock The Definitive Collection. I think there's a 2-track overlap and I'm surprised there's that many. As it's got Owner of the Lonely Heart on it I can now get rid of the Yes collection I picked up at our charity shop for coppers.

Time to go for a ride I think.