Replacing my music

Because of long, boring details I won't go into (basically one weather disaster plus some financial troubles), a while back I lost nearly all of my music collection, 30-plus years of CDs and cassettes. My actual record albums I had sold or given away years ago.

Fortunately, I was able to save a handful of CDs, mainly stuff that was stored in my vehicle at the time. These were:

The Doors - Greatest Hits
John Lennon - Greatest Hits
The Beatles - White Album
The Animals - Greatest Hits
The White Stripes - The White Stripes
The White Stripes - De Stijl
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
O' Brother Where Art Thou? - Soundtrack
Magnolia - Soundtrack
Singles - Soundtrack
Nirvana - Nirvana (greatest hists collection)
David Gray - White Ladder
David Gray - Lost Songs, 95-98
Rage Against the Machine - Renegades
Elvis Costello - North
Bruce Springsteen - Greatest Hits
Van Halen - Van Halen I
Van Halen - Women and Children First
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I

Until very recently, that was it. That's all I've had to listen to for the last year or so. Believe me, I've come to know all the songs on those albums quite well.

But I'm very slowly re-building my music collection, purchasing a few CDs every month.

What's interesting to me about this is the decisions I'm making about my music purchases.

First, let me say that yes, it is CDs I'm buying. I don't have a dedicated mp3 player and have no plans to purchase one, though I'm not a Luddite trying to make some stand against modern music technology. I like CDs for a variety of reasons, a big one being that I can play them in my current vehicle. If I decide for some reason I need an mp3 of a song (such as for my Kindle, which will play mp3s), I can always burn it off the CD.

More interesting to me, however, are the choices I'm making. There's a lot of music I used to have that I won't be buying again. For example, I do not feel a need to purchase any of the Poison cassettes I got back in high school. Yes, you can laugh now. Go ahead. I bet there's some real gutbusters in your own music collection.

This whole situation has made me really have to think about what music I find practically "necessary." I put "necessary" in quotes because music is not "necessary" in the sense that we do not need it to eat and breath, though arguably it can help one thrive as a human being.

I haven't made a list of what I'll be purchasing in the near future, but I can give a short list of what I have bought most recently, what were my first purchases upon jumping back on the musical bandwagon. In order of their purchase, the CDs are:

The Who - The Ultimate Collection
The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks: 1964 - 1971
The Police - Synchronicity
The Police - Every Breath You Take (greatest hits collection)
Nirvana - Bleach
Nirvana - Incesticide
The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers

Are those the albums most important to me? Yes and no. The collections for The Who and the Stones definitely are important to me, while the others are mostly ones I have enjoyed immensely over the years.

So what should be my next purchases? I'm leaning toward U2, though who knows. A lot will depend upon my mood at any given time,