I like to collect junk. I make no excuses about it. I have tried to cut back in recent years after realizing I have a closet full of just empty boxes for items I may or may not even still own. Despite this, I am still drawn to any pile marked “Free” whether it is on the street or at a conference table at work. For once in a long time, it actually may have paid off. At my current place of employment (in the advertising field) they are doing a shift of floors to accommodate some construction going on. The people up top now have to roam among the trolls like myself who work a few floors down. To make sure everyone was happy, they shifted people around into different rooms to facilitate the teams that exist a few floors up.
One of the groups that exist on our floor that had to be moved from one end to another was the music licensing department. You know that song that you can’t get out of your head that you picked up from a commercial for a travel website or a car you probably can’t afford, that is music licensing. They would go through stacks of music to find the right song or work out the licensing for a track that a director just HAD to have. At least that is how it used to be. With the advent of digital music libraries, gone are the days of sifting through CD’s and skipping track to track. Now it is all about search terms hitting the right metadata to find a song that fits the bill. With the music licensing department being moved, it seemed like a perfect time for them to unload all of the CD’s that have been just taking up space. Over the course of a week there would be a good 300 CD’s to sift through and take gratis. I got in on it early in the week and came out with some true classics from artists like MC Hammer to somewhat recently released music. I checked every day for any new additions. The selection got a little drab by the end of the week, but on Friday there was heart shaped box that caught my eye. I didn’t even think anything was in it and just grabbed it for the cool wooden box with the Nirvana logo.
Once I got back to my desk and opened it, I knew I would have to start finding out more.