Needs and wants

We all know the difference between a need and a want. Needing something is a necessity and wanting something is a desire to have something. An old saying goes, the worse thing about wanting something may actually be to get it. I found that out this week after shelling out $92 for a Cd set. From reading other entries in the blog, you all know how I was debating about buying a Cd set from The Dave Clark Five. I caved in last week and sent for it. The expense is due to the rarity and is now a collector's item. I am not a true collector in the collector sense of the word. The house is filled with enough and don't need collector's items all over the place. I have to deal with enough junk and have no desire to put stuff aside just for the sake of having it. I bought the set so I could hear the music. As soon as it showed up on Monday, I made a copy of both Cds and put the original set away. It showed up at the house like new. Not a scratch on the cover, the original booklet intact and the CDs look like they were never played. Maybe the original owner did what I did and just played the copies.

I have owned 8 of their popular songs from other sources and really enjoy them. This set contained a total of 50 songs and can see why those 8 only made it to the top of the charts. The late Mike Smith, lead singer, died back in April a week after the DC5 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He suffered injuries in a car accident last fall, became paraplegic and died of pneumonia along with other complications. His voice was one that in one song could sing a crooning ballad and the next one, rough and gravelly in sound. As I listened to the variety of tunes, he definitely sounded very similar to John Lennon in some of them and I guess that is why Paul McCartney criticized the group as a cheap Beatles's imitation. A few of the songs could pass for Beatles tunes if one was not knowledgeable with either of these groups.

Dave Clark was a one man show. He wrote many of the songs, was their business manager and was involved in all the record contracts, booking the tours, as well as the groups drummer. They maintained a clean cut style, always wearing suits on stage and appealed positively to all the American TV networks. But soon their clean cut style, the thing that made them famous, became their enemy. It wasn't long before other British groups like The Rolling Stones and The Who came along, with their "bad boy" images were becoming the norm and even though at first not accepted by TV execs, soon the networks caught on and traded good looks for cash.

So back to my point, I bought something I was very disappointed with, but all isn't lost. Since this thing is a collectors item, I can resell it and get my money back. I just may have to wait a while, but I can get it back. I will miss the booklet that came with the set, but maybe I can scan or copy all the pages and save it all somehow.

So keep this "want and need" thing in mind whenever you want something. In this case I can save all of it, unload it somehow without loss and still have it, so maybe got lucky in that sense. Doesn't work with all things, so always beware.

Keep an eye out as I said about things in a box on a future post. Just want to keep you in suspense.