I performed a little hard drive maintenance yesterday and made a separate iTunes library for my hard drive based music (as opposed to the stuff that lives on my laptop). On that hard drive? A whopping 9767 songs, or 25 days worth of music.

Cleaning up iTunes has enabled me to search for stuff I'd forgotten I had, including:

10 songs with Sarah (or Sara) in the title, gathered when I was making a mix for my little sister, Sarah. Represented: Starship, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Ween, Hall & Oates.

4 versions of Mr. Sandman, from my brief obsession with that song.

Want to know what popped up when I hit shuffle? Neither Sarah nor Sandman, but Justin Hayward's Forever Autumn from the 70s musical version of The War Of The Worlds. I recall the first few times (of many!) I heard that gorgeous chord progression. A few years back, this song might have sparked a panic attack. I worked many, many, many long hours on the deluxe 2005 reissue, and as a result, I can say "Martian" in several languages, in stereo, SACD and 5.1 surround.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7vfjJHcfeE&hl=en]

The more time I spend with CDs and records, the less desire I have to purchase them.

I heard the Pixies' Hey in a store on Sunday and, lo, it's still knocking around in my head this morning. At which point I consider two things:

Doolittle was released when I was in 8th grade, yet it was one of my favorite albums during my sophomore and junior years of college, on heavy, heavy rotation with Liz Phair and Stereolab.

When I first heard the Pixies, they sounded so dissonant, heavy, aggressive, so unlike anything I'd heard before. Now their melodies are earworms that lodge pleasantly in my head. And some store in Brooklyn plays songs with deliciously crude lyrics.