Before the interview with Division Day at Union Hall last Thursday, Ryan (d-day’s guitarist) mentioned Gary Numan’s album, Dance, which he has been listening to recently.
I bought the album about a year ago on e-music and after giving it a few casual listens on the subway, it fell into the abyss that is my ever expanding 120 GB music collection. So of course, the only comment I had about the album (which features the great Mick Karn on Bass) was regret that I had forgotten about it before I really gave it much of a listen.
As much as I love the extremely easy access to music that the internet provides, I really miss the days when buying a CD or two was more of an event. I discovered new music through my friends who were as obsessed as I was or reading music magazines. Buying a CD meant finding out about it, going to the music store to buy it, taking it home and then sitting down and listening to it while reading the liner notes. Don’t even get me started on the joy of making mix tapes sitting on the floor in front of my stereo surrounded by CD cases and an ashtray overflowing with butts.
Today, my rss reader is clogged with entries from music blogs that I rarely read because I get so overwhelmed with the number of unread entries (currently 2687) and the rate at which I download music makes it impossible to really listen to anything all that closely. Oh yeah… and I gave up smoking years ago.
Still, I don’t seem able to slow down. Like a Chihuahua who eats and eats until he pukes, how can I not continue? Is it just a matter of creating a more complex list of iTunes playlists, or maybe I should go back to buying CDs and start listening to music away from the computer where instant messages and twitters drive me from really paying attention to what I am listening too. Is there a way to live in both the past and present of consuming music and maintain a useful balance between them?
MikeyPod 108 | Soundseeing in NYC and Phone Calls
Funny – the other day I was thinking about when New Order’s Low-Life album was released. I was in college and I got the cassette of it and I listened to it in the car over and over because (1) I liked it and (2) I was too lazy to bring another tape out to the car. Now it’s harder, there’s always something new.
My suggestion: download all that stuff from music blogs but don’t put it in iTunes. Then sit and have “music time” and listen to each track and decide if you want to keep it.