I’ve had this book for a while – I have the 2005 version, it’s been updated I gather. I don’t know that it’s really any sort of resource, but it is the sort of book that someone like me owns. I haven’t ever read it right through, and I haven’t really ever had a plan to.

I was curious enough, a couple of years ago, to flip through it and put a tick by every album I had heard that is in the book. Someone had asked what percentage I thought I’d heard and I guessed that it would be more than 50%. I think it was closer to 80% in the end, I remember counting around 800 ticks anyway. Yes, my life is pretty exciting.

Anyway, what about those other 200 albums. What have I missed? Have I not had my fill of shit music and good music already? (The only two genres of music that exist). I worked in music retail, I’ve been reviewing albums for close to two decades – I’ve listened to bucket-loads of shit.

I’m disappointed this book mentions more albums by Morrissey than Frank Sinatra. That is just plain wrong. My record collection has more Sinatra than Morrissey. As any good record collection should.

Why are there only three Beach Boys albums that you must hear – and there are three Kanye West albums that you must hear? (I say that as if snotty about it yet I’ve listened to at least twice that amount of Kanye West albums, some of them I even liked). Three My Bloody Valentine albums that you must hear? Surely they mean one. Only four Miles Davis albums? I used to own an iPod that had over 100 Miles Davis albums.

Today, for example, while contemplating this I could have been checking out Machine Gun Etiquette (the album!) or Group Sex (the album!) Instead I spent most of this morning listening to Randy Newman bootlegs…and I sometimes think I could spend most mornings listening to just Randy Newman and my world (if not yours) would be (in) a better place. But I also need to listen to the good and the bad by the great and the average – listen to it all. I think on some level that’s been part of my goal with music. A maddening and absurd goal – to listen to it all – but there you go. And here we are!

I have no idea why I am writing this – or why I write about music at all anymore…beyond hoping to fill my day, maybe brighten yours and possibly try to understand the music a little more.

So I’m going to delve into this book, and read the entries about the albums I haven’t previously heard – as I’m listening to the records. Maybe I’ll write a few thoughts about these “First Listens”. (Or not).

The idea possibly arrived when I surprised myself recently by realising I had never heard Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water in its entirety. (Well, that’s fixed, that’s another tick, getting towards 81% of the book covered now, eh…)

That was a pleasant experience though. I love Simon & Garfunkel. And had heard 80-90% of that album’s songs – but not as an album. In this age of the apparent death of the album – it’s taking a while! – I am still calmly fixated with records. With albums. With the idea that a body of work is housed in and on something called an album. That, in some cases, it’s a cohesive work, in other cases a shambolic mess. That both instances offer rewards. That it is now more fascinating for me to listen through to Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants or his soundtrack to Jungle Fever than it is Songs In The Key of Life or Fulfillingess’ First Finale.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love Songs In The Key of Life, I know every crackle on the record, every crease on the cover of the copy I’ve had in my life since my birth – the same year the album came out by the way! And I sometimes think Stevie never wrote anything better than You Haven’t Done Nothin’ so Fulfillingess would be on my list of favourites for that alone, never mind every other great song it houses. But I also collected up everything he’s ever done because of my love for Songs In The Key of Life and the song You Haven’t Done Nothin’ and the album Fulfillingess’ First Finale. I couldn’t just have and hold on to Talking Book and Music of My Mind and the other great gems from that man. I had to hear the mistakes and missteps and find the magic or madness in those too…

Joni Mitchell singing with James Taylor or playing with Jaco Pastorius? Of course! Beautiful! But you have to also admire that Joni would go on to duet with Billy Idol. Well, you don’t have to. But I do. To this day I’ll never understand the fever-dream that brought about that pairing. But I know all her albums, so I know that song. Will I find other classic duets – or mad, weird pairings – on albums I thought I never needed to hear or never thought about? Sure, probably, why not…

Maybe I’ll find some great thing I never have heard. Or I’ll understand a little bit more about why certain albums become some sort of “classic” for an era I was never part of, or a signpost, a set of moments to sum up a moment in time and place and space for someone/anyone…

It’s come to this. My life’s goals were probably meant to be more, or better, but I’d like to tick off all 1001 of these albums…even as I struggle to find time to write reviews of other new albums too…

It’s an extravagant and pointless struggle. But it’s mine. So here goes…

(I’m such a nerd I’ve made sure this post is 1001 words long – what a dickhead!)