A  Column

Remember those days back in elementary school when everyone was hoping to get his first CD player or even – wait for it – a DISCMAN for Christmas? Gone were the days sitting in front of your cassette tape recorder, listening to the radio for hours and hours with only one goal in mind: to record THE one and only song (…and playing it back and fourth afterwards, driving your brother and parents crazy, aka desperately trying to convince them by that time that “Saturday Night” from Whigfield is THE-BEST-SONG-IN-THE-WORLD, C´mon…).

Coming back after the holidays the big fun in the classroom started, talking about all the new CD´s which were lying under the Christmas tree – but wait: Actually we all got the same CD´s as a present, hence there weren´t a lot of opportunities for a sophisticated music talk and interchange  (which by that time literally meant to share one CD with each other, especially when it came in form of a music compilation, i.e. two CD´s!).  Yes right – the pool of music to choose from was mainly limited to Bravo Hits Music Compilations, the Backstreet Boys, the Spice Girls…and..yes, that was it. I was in the lucky position, that I had access to the huge CD collection of my brother, but not allowed to take a Nirvana CD to school…I was told that this is not exactly what an eight year old is supposed to listen to…hmm..ok (making it of course even more interesting).

Looking through the latest music releases recently after deciding that it´s time for some new, fresh tracks I decided that it might be time to rethink the idea of buying a music compilation. Those kind of samplers were a “nice-to-have” back in those days when I started to listening to music, somehow developing what I would call the first stage of a somewhat music taste (which was more of a “Put-your-hands-in-the-air-like-you-just-don´t-care” kind of thing by that time).  Also, unlike in the good old Ninties I am simply not finding that much time to listening to music anymore (which is actually my favourite thing to do…) and sad but true: Seems I have no idea about what the young(er) people are listening to nowadays (yes…that moment when you realise that…).

I couldn´t help but wonder: Is it ok to buy a music compilation, like the ones I used to listen to when I was 17, or do people expect me to totally go with Jazz now? It felt a little bit like cheating to my favourite Alternative/Indie/Electro Radio station after listening to samples of the latest “Bravo Hits” edition, “…but why not giving it a try?”, I thought to myself, whilst clicking the buying button to buy…the Bravo Hits Best of 1996 Compilation, finally being able again to listen to “Wannabe” from the Spice Girls over and over again. Oh yeah! Feeling young(er) is again is just priceless.