I hate stuff like this. (Link blatantly pilfered from ericalynn.) Some e-zine staff got together to compile a list of what they consider to be "100 albums you should remove from your collection immediately."

Unfortunately, there's a good number of decent albums in there. Some might even be considered ground-breaking or genre-defining. But I get the distinct feeling that they included those albums in the list simply because they thought it cool to be anti-Establishment. "People actually like this album, therefore we need to shun it immediately," and other such mindsets. And if any of you actually get rid of any of these CDs because some dumbass website told you to, you deserve all the mockery that you get.

I'm a person who likes to seek out new music and I've got a voracious appetite for songs and artists that I've never heard before, simply because I like the experience of hearing something new that I like. But I don't abandon artists or songs simply because they became popular, and I don't go so far out into the fringe simply because I'm avoiding everything that everyone else is listening to. Yes, I listen to a lot of stuff that other people haven't heard of, but that's only because I want to hear new stuff since I'm sick of hearing the same songs over and over. It's not because I think that I'm a cooler person or that I'm more culturally elite because I own a CD that 99% of the population doesn't know about.

I do know some people like that. People who have this need to be so far ahead of the curve that the instant other people outside their little coterie of friends hear about a band and start to like them, they immediately claim that the band has "sold out" and stop supporting them. And, quite frankly, I don't need to hear that kind of thing. Yes, music is about expression and all that jazz, but the landlord will be expressing himself or herself to you quite clearly if your rent isn't paid on time, so getting popular and selling CDs isn't all that bad sometimes. Whether a band lets the fame get to their heads, that's when it becomes bad. But that's another deal for another time.

Speaking of selling CDs not being bad, Def Leppard stopped by my office this afternoon. With beer. It was awesome. I just wish I'd remembered ahead of time because I would've brought in my Def Leppard Greatest Hits CD for them to autograph, instead of the picture that I had them sign. But they were still some rather nice chaps and quite personable.