Too much information...

Has it got to the stage where too much stuff is coming at us to filter it all out? I think I've just hit overload...

I went into a record shop the other day - and how quaint does that sound in the twenty first century? For clarification, though it's a very good shop, it doesn't sell records, it sells CD's. And coffee. Whatever pays the bills, I guess.

Anyway, while there I noticed two things which, prior to that moment, I wasn't aware even existed - 'Bloom', the new album by former Lamb singer Lou Rhodes, and 'Jack Of Diamonds', the first in a series of unreleased material by former Mamas & Papa's leader John Phillips. Neither had come up on my radar before seeing them on the shelves. Given that Lou Rhodes last album had been nominated for a Mercury, and magazines always like writing about John Phillips because it shows how hip they are to that Californian hippie rock which was very in about six months ago, it's weird that neither of these things had turned up on my radar.

And The Tin Roof Blowdown, the latest Dave Robicheaux novel from James Lee Burke didn't pop up and wave at me until it had been out at least a month. This is something just a few years ago I'd have searched out, made sure it was pre-ordered, and grabbed as soon as it hit the shelves.

It's not as if I'm a hermit when it comes to reading the kind of magazines that feature this stuff. As well as writing for Word, I consume as much music review stuff as I'm able, or have the appetite for, depending.

Admittedly, having kids has changed my relationship with being first to stuff. And maybe as my online buying has become more prolific, so I've at the same time become more dependent on being told what to buy and when. But if Amazon don't know I'm interested in something, which let's face it, is at least possible in theory, then how will I know it exists?

How are we going to manage all this stuff?