I assumed - as most people do - that nothing is really lost. Especially given the infinite space of the internet and the human race's infinite capacity for retaining any old rubbish.
Yet I'm finding that my own memory banks are exceeding those of the Cloud. For instance: there are no clips anywhere of Dogfood Dan and the Carmarthen Cowboy, despite this execrable and deeply sexist sitcom running for 8 years. It's not been released commercially either.
What else is lost down the memory hole? Most of my 7" vinyl collection, and so much of the analogue world.
Thankfully, one of my favourite spiteful singles has been uploaded: The Period Pains' 'We Hate the Spice Girls'.
Novak's 'Silver Seas' is unavailable, but their rather wonderful 'Rapunzel' thankfully has been preserved for posterity. I have these on vinyl, but when I'm hit by the inevitable bus, they'll end up in the bin, along with the little extra design features and quirky inclusions which you don't get from a digital download - the aspects which locate a text in a culture.
I do worry about analogue artefacts: digital stuff is subject to the vagaries of fashion and bandwidth, but pre-digital stuff might get forgotten about just because it's not easy to disseminate. It saddens me that the efforts of so many bright young things will be forgotten because they're not easily accessible to laptop junkies. Perhaps I'll start a little series of vinyl appreciation posts. I'm this close to slipping back into my obsession with collecting every release from my favourite fragile record labels: early Fierce Panda, Drive-In Records, Secretly Canadian, Sarah, Postcard, Matador, Spin-Art, early Sub-Pop and Domino (mmm, Flying Saucer Attack), Che, Bad Jazz. Ah, happy days. If you want to lose a day, open this page and head off to youtube to play the tracks that are available. And then feel old and alien in your own skin,
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