The digitization of music affords us an opportunity not available since the heyday of vinyl. Instead of buying an entire album, we can collect songs one at a time, choosing only the songs we like. Where artists used to have hold over us for as much as an hour, now their spells last for three minutes, maybe four.
Where musicians used to craft a novel, now they have only a chapter. Or, rather, where we used to listen to a musician's story, now we only allow them a few minutes.
Just before Finals during my second semester of undergrad, my friend Chad dragged me, Ryan, and Seds to the little independent movie theater (which had never held any more significance than being next-door to Chipotle). Chad insisted that we watch Graceful Swans of Never, a documentary about the Smashing Pumpkins.
I left that theater with a profound respect for the process of recording an album. Who would've thought that so much consideration goes into the narrative? That an album is more than just a collection of songs?
After we left the theater, we went back to the dorm and played Flickerstick's Welcoming Home the Astronauts. Flickerstick was one of our favorite bands - we'd even driven to Columbus for their show a few months earlier - and we all had the album memorized. Even having listened to it start-to-finish a few dozen times, it sounded different in this new context. It really did tell a story... an astronaut's story, from liftoff to orbit to "my god it's full of stars". Now it was even more beautiful.
Now, 7 years later, I never listen to albums. CDs cost money, and downloaded songs cost money (at their most legal) and effort (at their least). Who among us would go out of their way to listen to "Underture" , the instrumental in the middle of The Who's Tommy that represents an acid trip, when all they really want to hear is an out-of-context "Pinball Wizard"? Would you spend $28 on all of the Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and sit through 9+ minutes of "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans", just to get to "1979"?
Musicians are still pouring their souls into their albums. It seems an injustice that we don't give their creations the same respect that we had to in the era of vinyl.
Not that I'll let that change my listening habits any time soon. Their art means less to me than my time and money, and I'm as cold as ice.
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- Don
- 5th year Grad Student at Rutgers, in the Biomechanics and Rehabilitation Engineering Lab. I race my bikes and sit in my lab, pondering neuromotor control and concocting blog posts. When the opportunity arises, I partake in Karaoke.
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2 comments:
I still buy albums. I am immensely impressed by artists that can create album after album with dramatically varied themes, yet the work is instantly recognizable as theirs. Beck jumps into my mind as one of those artists.
We will see if/how music changes in the age of buying a track at a time. But, remember, there were still singles out there in years past, and the radio hit is what got you into people's bedrooms (double entendre?).
most big label artist don't have the artistic freedom to build albums as in the earlier days of the record industry.
sadly most albums are over engineered, targeted at a demongraphic and reaching to cash in on the tweeners or something.
what was the last truly great album made? when was it made the 70's?
Even indy music is getting over engineered. I read recently were Amanda Palmers indy lable told her to lose weight. All her songs are about being kinda a misfit kid...
is art dead? has everything than can be done, done, is modern music just re-hashing what has been done.
Beck may be a shine exception.
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