The First One to Listen to. . .

With a collection of over 21,000 CDs . . . one surely has to decide a smaller subset of the total for first listen. I'm not sure that Avi would have been able to listen to all the CDs in this collection; he was a completest. And his family verified that they once gave him a present from his collection, and he happily assumed it was a new addition to the collection!

So, through a combination of my own interests, and sometimes just trying to figure out where his musical head and heart resided, I can reveal, and this might change, I intend to listen to a fuller breadth of artists I already like; Avi tended to buy an artists' entire output. Also, there are many artists I've wanted to understand their work, and I do have some interest in the unique Australian flavor of the collection, with Avi originally hailing from Melbourne. Avid used to limit the time I could talk about the Little River Band, Australia's first rock act to really make it huge in the USA. Many of LRB's core members have since become friends. Well, guess what? Avi had an entire crate for "Little River Band" types, with many of their early releases, work with prior bands, and subsequent solo work.

As you can see, i will find many parts of this journey fascinating, fun, and as it is with music, quite deep at times.

With that said, I'll probably ignore all the Classical and Jazz stuff as I have to draw the line somewhere. It doesn't do it for me. Too many notes.

I'm already curious why Neil Diamond, however, was so particularly popular in Australia. Avi and I talked at length about a latter work from Mr. Diamond: Captain of My Own Shipwreck. I guess it's safe to reveal that indeed, I/we had to be Coast Guard rescued at sea off the coast of California with Avi as unruffled ship captain.

With Avi Davis, there was never a dull moment. In fact I referred to him as AVID, as a mark of his attitude for adventure, and most certainly music.