THOUGHTFULLY PRODUCED BY ANALOG
A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who is professional musician. We played in a relentlessly obtuse metal band together and we still share a studio space so our paths occasionally cross when I'm working on mixing and he stops by to pickup or drop-off some of his gear. Usually these impromptu discourses focus on the mundane and the filthy, supplemented by a healthy dose of dick and fart jokes, but this time the conversation worked its way onto the topic of music and specifically, a listeners tangible connection to music.
Pardon you ask? WTF you ask? Let me explain.
We live in a digital world where the entire human history is just a wiki-click away. In this shrinking world, Marshall McLuhan's theories of the Global Village have most certainly come true. Knowledge is instant. Want to know the GDP of Romania ($264B)? Done. How about the winner of Best Actress at the 1956 Oscars (Ingrid Bergman)? No problem. The same goes for music. The listener can access music from across the globe with almost no effort but the ease at which information is transmitted is neither a good or bad thing. It simply is the world we live in. I have to wonder though...what effect does this have on the music listener?
In the past our association to music was always with the physical. Performances, the vinyl LP, the cassette tape, the compact disc. These were all things we could see and touch. Music fans built their reputation on the ferocity of their collections rather than the size of their hard drives. One could spend hours in a record store, combing the shelves for import Radiohead singles or discovering bargain bin treasures like Terry Jacks. But the MP3 made this experience obsolete. Now one can stroll the aisles of a virtually endless record store, one with all the best and most obscure music, then instantly download that music. It seems all so simple...but is it also destructive? The hunt is over in minutes and instant gratification is achieved. But that gratification is neither satisfying or long lasting and soon, for good or ill, that same person is back at virtual checkout with the newest single from yet another band from Brooklyn.
Many people see music as disposable nowadays and with both major and independent artists giving away their music for free the factual consensus seems to be growing. But why? With more access to cross genre creativity than ever before listeners still feel disassociated enough to drop their favorite new band as soon as their next record comes out. Why? Downloading requires no effort. No leaving the house. No searching through dusty shelves of music. No judging glances at your Ace of Base selection from the snobby store clerk (fuck yeah I know all the words to "The Sign"). The download eliminated some of the very things that make listeners connect with an artist. The download killed the hunt for the album none of your friends had. The one you could champion and hold like a badge of honor. That search made listeners into fans and fans buy records like the dickens.
Digital music is not going away. iTunes is the largest music retailer in the world yet even as CD sales are in exponential decline, vinyl sales are on the rise. In a world filled with endless choice and crystal clear compressed audio files, music listeners are still rabid for crusty old vinyl. How can this be? You might expect me to go on about how vinyl sounds better (it does) and how the experience of a spinning turntable triggers intense childhood nostalgia (it does), but that isn't why I think vinyl is still so popular. It all comes down to the experience of listening. Not jogging with your iPod on shuffle. Not playing video games with music running in the background. Not driving a car with a mix-disc in the dash. I mean sitting in a room with a beefy set of speakers, cranking the volume and actually listening. You can't carry a record player around with you. You can't set it to shuffle. And you certainly can't install one in your car. These limitations force the listener to pay attention instead of turning artwork into musak.
My turntable is a simple, suitcase sized number with speakers in the side. I bought it for $150 on Ebay. I don't use it a ton since the majority of my music is on CD and I'm not going to act like I've never downloaded a song before. But when I put John Lennon's Double Fantasy on the platter, the needle slips into that familiar groove and my two year old daughter starts dancing to "Yoko" it not only makes me immensely happy, it makes me confident that someday the music fans of this world will decide to repent for their sins of neglect by grabbing a cup of tea, putting all their thoughts into a comfortable chair and really, REALLY listening.
