Wednesday, February 18, 2004
The problem-- or a problem-- with downloading individual songs is that it eliminates the pleasure of the obscure song on the second side-- the song that is really your favorite, that you use on mix tapes, that you very seldom hear.
Of course, this is a pleasure that is nearly lost already, because the concept of Side One and Side Two-- and each as a discrete unit is long gone. What remains are bloated, over-stuffed CDs, or, I suppose, I-Pods with ten million billion songs on them, and no context whatsoever.
Oddly enough, though, this is not completely true. Sometimes there is a song on a CD that you overlook that turns out to be a happy little find once you notice it. This happened to me most recently when I was compiling the Hornby disk: the Aimee Mann tune that Hornby has on his list happens to be on the only Aimee Mann side I own, but I'd never really listened to it. It's good, but in the context of the over-all work I'd missed it. (Actually, it's worse than that-- the album, "Whatever" starts off with a very heavily produced sound, and "I've Had It" is much simpler-- it sounded to me like they ran out of money). My point, I guess, is that this sort of serendipity is lost in the download world, and more rare in the CD world than it used to be
Of course, this is a pleasure that is nearly lost already, because the concept of Side One and Side Two-- and each as a discrete unit is long gone. What remains are bloated, over-stuffed CDs, or, I suppose, I-Pods with ten million billion songs on them, and no context whatsoever.
Oddly enough, though, this is not completely true. Sometimes there is a song on a CD that you overlook that turns out to be a happy little find once you notice it. This happened to me most recently when I was compiling the Hornby disk: the Aimee Mann tune that Hornby has on his list happens to be on the only Aimee Mann side I own, but I'd never really listened to it. It's good, but in the context of the over-all work I'd missed it. (Actually, it's worse than that-- the album, "Whatever" starts off with a very heavily produced sound, and "I've Had It" is much simpler-- it sounded to me like they ran out of money). My point, I guess, is that this sort of serendipity is lost in the download world, and more rare in the CD world than it used to be
