Not alphabetical. Not chronological. Autobiographical.

I think it was around Thanksgiving that I started posting the albums I was listening to as status updates on Facebook. I’d like to think I started because I’m just that resistant to coming up with clever soundbites — I’m more of a long-form, old-school kinda guy (or something pretentious like that). But honestly, I think it was mostly out of sheer laziness.

I’ve basically kept it up ever since, injecting non-album updates every few days or so. I don’t have an iPhone (yet), so the posts don’t sync up exactly “live” in time. I’ll put on a record and not realize I’m committing to the whole thing until halfway through, and I’ll post it. Or I’ll return from a shopping trip during which I listened to two albums, and I’ll post them, followed by the record I just started. And so on. Also, in case anyone cares, I don’t always finish the album I post. Life interrupts, or my interest fades.

I was a little surprised but mostly just pleased with how my album posts generated more comments than almost all of my “regular” updates. People chimed in quickly: “One of my favorites,” “Any good?” “I prefer Boys for Pele,” etc. The exchanges were brief, but it seemed to capture something of the communal spirit of this *cough* social network. People from radically different eras of my life would agree on an album, and it was…nice.

But the other effect this has had is more internal, I guess. I’d hate to think I’ve been forcing a kind of eclecticism on myself over the last few months, just to show off what broad tastes I have. But it’s entirely possible that a little of that has been going on, subconsciously. Leaving that aside, though, it’s not so much the eclecticism that bothers me as…well…eclecticism by another name: fickleness.

For a way more scholarly dive into what I’m getting at, check out this Salon piece (excerpted from n+1) by Nikil Saval. In it he says, “As certain foodies score points by having eaten everything — blowfish, yak milk tea, haggis, hot dogs — so the person who knows and likes all music achieves a curious sophistication-through-indiscriminateness.” Ouch. But it’s true, right? Saval ties this to the digitization of music, which I think is largely true. But I also think getting older has something to do with it.

I’ve talked about this with my brother Scott many times, how liberating it feels at first to lose some of your twentysomething indie rock snobbishness and start to appreciate, say, the Grateful Dead. While it’s fun to loosen up and discover a virtually endless world of “first listens,” it’s a bit of a slippery slope. Open-mindedness in relation to music, combined with the all-you-can-eat nature of the access we have to it currently…adds up to me listening to things once, maybe twice…and then shelving them.

Put another way, if Facebook existed when I was seventeen, and I was posting albums like I am now, a couple days’ postings might look like this:

• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Rainmakers – Tornado
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• Simon and Garfunkel – The Sounds of Silence
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs
• The Smiths – Louder Than Bombs

I’m willing to accept the fact that music doesn’t provide me with as many emotional nutrients as it might have when I was younger, that a certain percentage of my listening these days is going to be a lighter, delighted-but-detached, nerdy activity. And I’m not saying I want to give up or discount “nerdy listening” — because it’s just plain fun. But the attention I used to give to every album I obtained, just the sheer number of spins I’d devote… There’s something to be said for that.

I was a huge Oasis fan, all the way through their career. Following them was the closest analogue to the devotion I used to practice as a younger person, picking up physical — even “deluxe” — versions of their albums and listening to them over and over. I recently did this with Liam’s post-Oasis band, Beady Eye. As a “super-fan,” I had more drive than usual to play Different Gear, Still Speeding over and over. Upon first listen, some of the songs made me wince, and I thought maybe there’d be two keepers total; I would definitely not recommend this to friends. But then with the fourth, fifth, sixth spin…melodies that seemed elusive — or just rote — revealed their hum-ability. They’d stick in my head, propelling me through work days, nudging me to go back and play it again…

Isn’t this how music’s supposed to work? How it used to, how it still can? I think so.

I can’t promise myself anything because it’s a crazy, busy world, but I’m writing this down as a pledge to myself. To not skip around so damn much. To live with albums more, to stick with them. To allow myself to get caught in / surprised by / addicted to records like I used to more often.

So…more often, please. More often, then.

Share/Save

Or did I?

I was really grateful for all the feedback I received, and it was fun to come back after a day at the beach and find stuff to mull over with Amy. Most people began their comments by fighting for one side or the other, but eventually acknowledged that the pay-what-you-like / Radiohead model accommodated them in the end, so why not go with that? In addition, some people suggested some kind of incentive for people who did pay a certain amount, like bonus tracks. I started to get excited.

Because that’s just the thing. In this day and age, offering your album on the internet rolls together two exchanges whose differences may be slight — and technically non-existent — but which I think are important just the same: 1) Getting your stuff “out there” and heard, disseminated to as many iPods as possible, like airwaves in the old days, and 2) “Properly selling” your new album to fans. In the first instance, duh, it makes exactly no sense to charge anything, and as a POTENTIAL fan I’m happy to gobble up a bunch of free tracks to check someone out. (e.g., a free Decemberists track I downloaded back in 2002 made me a fan for life.)

But then, also as a fan, there’s the second exchange, and this is important to me. If I know I like something, and I appreciate the work the artist put into it, then I want to compensate them for that. But at the same time, as a specifically geeky fan, the download in general just leaves me cold. And I really think that the inclusion of bonus tracks for people who pony up a certain amount (I decided on $5) kind of injects the coolness back into the exchange.

So I set it up Radiohead style mid-October, and it’s been kind of a fun game to imagine what peoples’ thought processes might be behind their chosen price-points. Seven dollars? Well, that’s what I charge for the CD, so maybe they figured they’d pay the same and save me postage. Six bucks?  That’s a dollar a song (iTunes style).  Five dollars? The bare minimum to get the bonus tracks. Ten bucks? Sort of the standard CD price. And so on.

Long story short, this is one case where groupthink proved completely correct. To be part of the experiment (heh), check out the Zapruder Point Bandcamp page.

Share/Save

More thorny, though, are those bands caught “in between” my preferred formats as they’ve switched. For example, I really liked Camera Obscura’s Let’s Get Out of This Country from two or three years ago. And, it being two or three years ago, what I picked up was a CD copy. But this year, they released a follow-up, and I’m not sure whether to commit to a vinyl copy…or go the more cautious route of getting it on eMusic. But CD? That middle thing? In 2009, in so many instances, this has felt silly to me in a way it never used to.

(Camera Obscura’s a recent, one-album, case. For bands I’ve known and felt deeply through several compact disc releases, it gets a bit weirder. These have been “CD bands” to me, and perverse as it sounds, I’d like to keep it that way. I mean, I don’t want to switch format horses at what might be the midpoint of the Decemberists’ library. Ditto for Ted Leo, double for my Johnny Cash — the closest thing to a “collection” of any single artist I have. This is a weird tick that I hope will work itself out…but we’ll see.)

As for MP3s, well. Last night I was looking over The Onion’s year-end top 25 list, and I found myself gazing at the cover of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, sort of basking in the recognition of that icon, letting it trigger memories of the songs therein… And this will sound like the smallest, dumbest thing, but I experienced warm and fuzzy feelings without any follow-up anxiety over the fact that I “only” have that album in MP3 format.

I think the anxiety’s gone and I feel relaxed about it because there are quite a few new albums I’ve experienced this year after obtaining them online.  But the important thing is that, once obtained, I still experienced them fully as albums. I think there’s always been a part of me that’s felt paranoid about MP3s, that these shards of song will somehow, by their very fragmentary nature, break my albums apart. But it turns out that this ALBUM part of me is impossible to shatter. Feeling that, I can relax, and turn on to some amazing stuff in the process.  Just like in the old days.  I guess.  This stuff is so obvious to many of you fine people, but what the heck…

[End of rant proper, but...]

A postscript about what I mean when I say “obtained online.” I don’t mean filesharing, because 1) I’m not poor any more, 2) I’m not in a race to hear things before they’re “officially” released, and 3) filesharing software seems clunky, and there’s no guarantee that what you get won’t sound like total shit and/or will have the right credits and/or artwork, etc. In other words, even at “free,” the cost/benefit analysis just doesn’t work out for me.

I also don’t mean iTunes, because while I’ve admitted here to being cool with the format, $.99 per MP3 (or even $9.99 per MP3 album) still seems like a high price-point for a non-physical thing that doesn’t even create spreadsheets. Right? It just seems nuts that something we can all SEE doesn’t need to be warehoused on a shelf…and doesn’t need to be shipped to my door…should cost anywhere near something that DOES. I am merely saying this.

Lastly, I don’t mean Rhapsody. Because while many of my friends, erm, rhapsodize about the service, the idea of relying on an internet connection to listen to music strikes me as a headache waiting to happen.

But eMusic. Oh, eMusic. I pay something like $17 a month to download four or five albums. This is an agreeable price-point, and I really look forward to that day each month when my credits are replenished and I can “pick up” whatever albums I’ve read about and bookmarked. It’s really eMusic’s album-centric site and service that’s eased me into the world of purely digital music. They integrate with Allmusic, they offer plentiful editorial content (“guides” to west coast hip-hop and whatnot), and their selection is crazy huge.

So thanks to them, and thanks to you, and stay tuned for a possible top 10 or two.

Share/Save

But… And this question will only be relatable to music nerds of a certain age, but: What about the ones I like? What about the ones I fall madly in love with? Any sane, modern American would say, “Umm, listen to it a lot?” But for someone who’s been conditioned to bond with albums via some physical form, it’s unsatisfying on some ghostly level to have these songs “just” in my iTunes library, “just” in MP3 format.

So, I’ve taken to burning CD-R’s of whatever I don’t dislike, so there’s some physical copy around. Why? In case I want to throw it into the kitchen CD player, or take it with me in the car. But lately I’ve been realizing how silly that is, since both of these players have iPod jacks. Indeed, the only stereo in my house that can’t handle an iPod is the big one in my office–and that can be remedied with a $15 iPod dock.

Not to mention the storage problem. Even in slimline cases, burning a CD or two a month above my regular, non-experimental purchases (like the Thermals’ latest) starts to expand rather robustly. I look at my shelves and think of what Amy’s done, what a lot of my friends have done–put their boxless discs in zippered binders, just in case, leaving the digital copy as the main library. Shelf space liberated.

I have no conclusion today. But I will say that those of us raised on CDs–we got the worst of both worlds. As a tactile experience, they pale in comparison to vinyl, hanging on a hinge and a flimsy booklet. But then from the perspective of convenience, the things aren’t small ENOUGH by today’s standards, having the gall to take up more than hard drive space. They might as well not exist, and every day that becomes more and more likely.

Meanwhile, I love the new Metric album so much that I want to have a “proper” copy of it. I could just burn it ($0.30), but the CD is also available for cheap on Amazon ($7.99), and I think I’ve seen it on vinyl at Reckless ($10 – $15). So how much do I love it? And is spending extra money for it a fulfillment of that love, or merely an expression of it? Is either possibility sad and/or unhealthy? At least economically? Is this a rich man’s dilemma or what?

Whether records or furniture or puppets, treasuring things is a joy, and one I’ll probably indulge for the rest of my life. But when I lean on that pleasure too much, when I fool myself into thinking it contains nutrients it simply doesn’t, that’s where the problems start.

p.s.
For further reading, Chris Day has an excellent blog about the collection-compulsion from a comic-book perspective. Also, as an introduction to his 2008 top tens, glenn mcdonald explores the CD format and how it relates to music vs. the music business, etc.

Share/Save

The thing looks absurd on my desk, but maybe that’s because it’s got my 2004 iBook flanked to the left, while I try to keep track of what needs moving over, and figure out how. Many questions remain, but what I’m sure of is what I’m most psyched about: that everything on it, including my iTunes library, Garageband files, and AIF’s for burning Zapruder Point CDs, will fit EASILY, and it will ALL back up onto a single external drive.

Even before I got the iBook, I knew I’d have to play storage games, knowing my music would never fit on the 40 (really 30) GBs. Lately it was getting even more headachey (!!!), with me offloading some musical stuff onto thumb drives, etc. What a relief to say goodbye to all of that, even if my dreams of wireless keyboards and mice are deferred. (Hey: If “settling” for a slightly less shiny-and-new computer is how the economic crisis trickles down to me…then I have a lot to be thankful for.)

In other news, while I was driving around Cleveland, I borrowed a more-80′s-than-70′s John Denver mix I’d made for Mom about a year ago. I was floored not just by how many words I still remembered, but by how perfectly within my range all the vocal lines fit. Singing “Some Days are Diamonds” at the top of my lungs while cruising 480 was a blast.

Now that I write that, it occurs to me that whenever I put on John Denver at home, I can’t resist singing either. Makes sense, even if it’s not the coolest thing to admit to. I was raised on this stuff. Aww yeah:

Share/Save