Digitalis

The advent of digital music players, iTunes, p2p filesharing, bit torrent, etc etc has been a real boon to those like me that are borderline music obsessives. Nowadays there is virtually nothing that you can't download at the drop of a hat completely legally, or sometimes slightly less than.

Rare tracks, albums from the past that you couldn't afford at the time, new stuff, unsigned bands, concert recordings, mashups, covers, old favourites...

With my iPod hooked up in the car I have access to 52 bazillion tracks. Put it on shuffle and its like listening to your own personal radio show, the random selections throwing up interesting juxtapositions and changes of mood and tempo.

Absolutely fan-bloody-tastic!

Except...

I find I don't listen to stuff with quite the same fervour anymore. Perhaps its an age thing but I suspect its more than that. Music has become commoditised (if there is such a word) - its too easy to get hold of and requires less of an investment. If I read about some new band that sound interesting I see if I can download something and give it a listen. Occassionally I will listen a second or third time but by then I will have found something else that stirs my curiosity.

I no longer listen to music, I mean really listen...playing the albums again and again and again 'til the music becomes embedded in your brain forever. Now I listen, enjoy, and move on.

Is this just me, or is it now the norm?

I miss the ritual aspects of the old days:

- Record shops that didn't look like a branch of Superdrug. I remember the mysterious dark cave that was Listen Records, just off Sauchiehall St in Glasgow. You felt like a member of a select club when you passed inside. Strange music pumping out LOUD, racks of mysterious album sleeves, the "Frankly Cheaper" bags with the picture of Zappa on the side. This was not a shop for the followers of the Top Twenty, you just knew you would get laughed out into the street, by the unfeasibly hairy man behind the counter, if you asked for the latest single by Dollar or The Goombay Dance Band. I used to spend hours in there, hours...
- Vinyl albums and proper cover art. People walking around at school with albums under their arms, kind of like a statement of their identity, who they were. Some commonplace like Deep Purple - Made In Japan, Frampton Comes Alive, anything by The Rolling Stones; some esoteric, Amon Duul, Van Morrison's Hard Nose The Highway, Patti Smith's Horses. I remember vividly when Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was released, everyone coming out of Listen had that album - up and down the length of the street there were people slicing or ripping open the black polythene covering to see the artwork on the sleeve. It was an event...

Back in the car if a track from those days comes up on the iPod I am always surprised to find that I still know all the words, even if I haven't heard them for a frightening number of years.

I must have really really listened then.