I came back for this?!?! The second thread I read dares to disparage the name of our holy hipster savior, Jeff Mangum?!?!
I'm only partially joking. I was fortunate enough to have a friend pick up tickets to one of his upcoming shows and it will be the biggest musical event for me in a long time. And I am absolutely giddy at the prospect of forking over a hundred bucks for the new vinyl box set. NMH's 2 albums (and Mangum's live solo CD) are some of the most heavily played in my collection. That being said, I don't think his music is for everyone - but the fascinating thing is how many people seemed to have fallen in love with his music independently. But that's a discussion for another thread.
As for amclark2's comment regarding repeat listens, I often wonder how much music I like simple because I've heard it a lot. While some albums are obviously growers, I remember the days of having the CMJ or Paste sampler discs playing on repeat to see what stuck. After days of listening to nothing but the same sampler it seemed as though I liked almost every track.
And personally I am on board with the idea that there are many albums I would like to hear at least once. There is so much music I've turned my nose up after 30 seconds only to realize later that those 30 seconds did not sound right out of context.
Picking up an earlier comment, I do agree with kargatron about listening for knowledge - not always the same as listening for music. Case in point - I think I grew up in the wrong country for this thread. Trying to check my memory, I can find no mention of the Minutemen in records of British music happenings in 1984. Don't think I had heard of them. We were all too busy wondering whether Wham! would split and whether Frankie Goes to Hollywood were really playing their own instruments and why America sent us Madonna and who was singing which line in Band Aid. The name 'Minutemen' still doesn't mean a huge amount to me now. So, spotify to the rescue, Double Nickels now playing. Don't hate it. Don't love it. It's pleasant enough. I could imagine giving it another listen. Don't have strong feelings either way about the vocals. Hard to reconstruct its significance, not having been there...
(They certainly knew how to structure an album for maximum spotify earnings. Good foresight that.)
(Oh and I also pulled up "The Cheerleaders". I agree, I wouldn't enter that for a singing competition.)
ETA: wait, I found a song I do have strong feelings about. "Don't look now" is really bad.
Do listening services like Spotify devalue music? I say they do the opposite. As long as there are great albums I've never given a proper listen, I won't be listening to anything a half-dozen times to see if it "sticks". I'm currently chewing on the 1001 albums playlists.
Before the advent of recording technology, you could hear a performance exactly once, provided you were in the right place at the right time. Having access to hundreds or thousands of albums that I've never heard highlights the cost of listening to one performance over and over. Every time I do that, it's another album I won't hear, ever.
But that's exactly what devaluing means. Any individual album becomes an increasingly ephemeral consumable, because there's always another one to click to.
Catching up with this thread after being away for a while - for me Spotify is useful to fully listen to an album I'm not sure of in its entirety to see if I want to buy it, either download or the CD. Certainly if I do buy muisc I'll want to play it a few times - I agree with amclark's minimum five times. But like Katrina, I think, above, I have wasted downloads on things I'll probably only listen to once or twice at the most. I'll also listen to albums on Spotify I have on LP from decades ago but can no longer play - as we don't have the majors on emusic I tend not to go to say itunes to buy them because there is more newer stuff out there that I'd rather spend my money on. I admit that I am a Spotify fan, and I'm glad that you now have that experience too.
I think I went too far a bit - it's not as if I'm meaning to criticize Spotify or streaming, and if I could swing more than an hour a week in front of a computer where I could use it, I'm sure I'd find lots and lots of things to stream - I'm always reading about things here and there that sound worth a quick scan or two or five. I started the thread because I was excited about it; I just wasn't thinking how unuseable it would be for me at this particular moment.
At the same time, I do occasionally miss the bad old days, when I had less music, and more time, and listened a lot more thoroughly. I'm in no hurry to give up my huge music collection or to stop growing it like mad, but still...
At the same time, I do occasionally miss the bad old days, when I had less music
Yes we do have much more music now, with far greater availability in all kinds of formats. Years back I'd perhaps buy a couple of LPs per month, and later CDs when they became available. I would play new releases over and over again, interspercing with a handful of other current favourites. For the price of 2 CDs when they first came out I can now download 70 or 80 tracks a month, maybe more. Therefore I am not going to listen as much to each album as I did back then. But I do play music more often - the range of ways to access music is part of it. But I do have more time too. It is just a stage of life thing, when at some point there are other priorities (children and work I guess) And yes, I do sometimes miss those times with less music, but not for long when I think of all the available muisc out there that I'd never knew even existed back then - I'm currently listening to Vieux Farka Toure for example.
The smell of the record store, especially a used record store. A little patchouli whafting out of the back room, cute hippie girl working the counter. I'd download that even if I had to use iTunes.
@GermanprofBut that's exactly what devaluing means.
The artificial scarcity perpetuated by the record companies was holding up "The Value of Music". But everyone, at all times, has always had the option to listen to something else, including picking up something and banging on it.
The value you add to an album by listening to it a half-dozen times comes at the expense of 5 other albums you would want to hear. You've effectively destroyed 5 albums in your private universe. I'll start replaying when I run out of great albums I haven't heard yet.
If anyone finds a service to download albums and patchouli-scented hippie girls, I'll sign up immediately. I don't even care which albums are included.
The value you add to an album by listening to it a half-dozen times comes at the expense of 5 other albums you would want to hear. You've effectively destroyed 5 albums in your private universe. I'll start replaying when I run out of great albums I haven't heard yet.
I am actually finding it hard to believe you really mean this as stated. I think the point at which I am struggling is in what meaningful sense of the word an album could be described as "great" if it is actually possible with one listen only to take in all that needs to be taken in to appreciate it. You will certainly end up having "heard" a lot of albums (though the quest is quixotic - there will always be more albums than you can skim) but I doubt you'll have actually listened to many of them, or experienced very ,much of the "greatness" that got them onto those lists in the first place. Even granting that there are some "great" recordings whose greatness lies in a kind of primal simplicity or immediate emotional effect or sheer catchiness, you are "destroy[ing]...in your private universe" the possibility of ever actually experiencing other varieties of "greatness" that have any tie to the progressive experience of complexity, wrestling with profound lyrics, hearing new nuances, making new connections, etc. And I don't even mean that as a kind of blanket apologia for the highbrow - like I said, there is also a greatness of immediacy that isn't necessarily just superficiality, and that's fine; it just that you are excluding an awful lot of the experiences that actually make it worth calling a large swathe of music "great" in the first place. And that's where the "devaluing" comes in - you seem to be saying that "great" music is not really worth your time for no better reason than because you could be elsewhere. And is any of this music really that "great" if none of it makes you value a second listen above the next musical item on your checklist?
It's as if you said you wanted to have one bite of food at a thousand different restaurants because you'd heard they each offered a really well put together five course meal (and you praised each to the skies afterwards but never fancied going back); at a certain level it just sounds irrational. Or you wanted to spend sixty seconds each with a million different people because you'd heard they were all great conversationalists. (I am sure the analogies will bite back; I care more about the previous paragraph than whether they work. Just trying to put into words why what you said sounds just plain odd.)
None of which means, I think, that there is no place for spotify, for trying to hear a bunch of albums said to be great at least once each because you only have so much time. I'm doing the same, in great moderation between other kinds of listening. But it sounds like you are taking the rather extreme position that the splendor of spotify is never having to hear to anything more than once. That's where I find it hard to find any desire at all to live in the private universe you seem to be describing. Hyperbole, surely....?
If anyone finds a service to download albums and patchouli-scented hippie girls, I'll sign up immediately. I don't even care which albums are included.
My wallet will be open from that easy smile as she pushes a stray dread back behind her ear.
@GermanProf - "Haven't actually been to Corner." I recommend it. Great place for buying vinyl, good selection of used CDs as well. The backroom has 45s, which do not interest me at all. Not a hipster store like Vertigo, so there is not a lot of new stuff on the shelves. I think Nag Champa is the scent of choice, and no hippie girl (sadly). Have you been around G-Rap long enough to remember Vinyl Solution? The Corner Record Shop is more like that, although in the later years.
On topic: I am enjoying the Naxos Early Music playlist on Spotify.
So it turns out I can use Spotify for free on my phone by doing some sort of synch thing. I have to get home to try it, but looks like there I go down the plugghole.
@Plong42 - Vinyl Solution rings a bell somewhere but I am not sure I ever went there. Been here since 2000.
It's true, they don't say anything about a hippie girl at Corner. Don't get across to that corner of town much - probably why I've not been in there.
Vinyl Solution was around in 1990, I left G-Rap then and returned in 1998, it was either out of business then or on its way. Used to be a hole in the wall on south Division that sold hardcore punk and harder to find progressive rock, ended up on 28th street where BW3 is now. Grew too big, lost the edge. I bought alot of records there, sold alot of records and bought alot more CDs.
Actually, it was the failure of local record shops to hire sufficient numbers of cute hippie girls that got me into buying stuff online in the first place.
I saw a cute Goth chick behind a record-store counter once, but it turned out she'd just dropped by to visit the (far more typical) fat bearded guy with dirty glasses on who was actually working back there.
@Plong42 - must have been thinking of another place. Perhaps there has been more than one record store in the world with "Vinyl" in its name... I used to go to Vertigo more when my son was in his early teens and very into things that involved loud screaming, and I went to metal concerts at (the late) Skeletones with him, which was virtually next door. @Scissorman, thanks for the timely mid-afternoon chortle. You conjured up such a vivid picture with so few words.
Comments
I'm only partially joking. I was fortunate enough to have a friend pick up tickets to one of his upcoming shows and it will be the biggest musical event for me in a long time. And I am absolutely giddy at the prospect of forking over a hundred bucks for the new vinyl box set. NMH's 2 albums (and Mangum's live solo CD) are some of the most heavily played in my collection. That being said, I don't think his music is for everyone - but the fascinating thing is how many people seemed to have fallen in love with his music independently. But that's a discussion for another thread.
As for amclark2's comment regarding repeat listens, I often wonder how much music I like simple because I've heard it a lot. While some albums are obviously growers, I remember the days of having the CMJ or Paste sampler discs playing on repeat to see what stuck. After days of listening to nothing but the same sampler it seemed as though I liked almost every track.
And personally I am on board with the idea that there are many albums I would like to hear at least once. There is so much music I've turned my nose up after 30 seconds only to realize later that those 30 seconds did not sound right out of context.
(They certainly knew how to structure an album for maximum spotify earnings. Good foresight that.)
(Oh and I also pulled up "The Cheerleaders". I agree, I wouldn't enter that for a singing competition.)
ETA: wait, I found a song I do have strong feelings about. "Don't look now" is really bad.
he's good, but he's no . . . ..
Before the advent of recording technology, you could hear a performance exactly once, provided you were in the right place at the right time. Having access to hundreds or thousands of albums that I've never heard highlights the cost of listening to one performance over and over. Every time I do that, it's another album I won't hear, ever.
At the same time, I do occasionally miss the bad old days, when I had less music, and more time, and listened a lot more thoroughly. I'm in no hurry to give up my huge music collection or to stop growing it like mad, but still...
You have the same amount of time in each day that you had back then! I don't listen to music as often, either.
"It is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important."
~ from The Little Prince
Only in my mind's eye. Actually Corner Record Shop is close, without the hippie girl. I haven't been in Vertigo in a while, though.
The artificial scarcity perpetuated by the record companies was holding up "The Value of Music". But everyone, at all times, has always had the option to listen to something else, including picking up something and banging on it.
The value you add to an album by listening to it a half-dozen times comes at the expense of 5 other albums you would want to hear. You've effectively destroyed 5 albums in your private universe. I'll start replaying when I run out of great albums I haven't heard yet.
I am actually finding it hard to believe you really mean this as stated. I think the point at which I am struggling is in what meaningful sense of the word an album could be described as "great" if it is actually possible with one listen only to take in all that needs to be taken in to appreciate it. You will certainly end up having "heard" a lot of albums (though the quest is quixotic - there will always be more albums than you can skim) but I doubt you'll have actually listened to many of them, or experienced very ,much of the "greatness" that got them onto those lists in the first place. Even granting that there are some "great" recordings whose greatness lies in a kind of primal simplicity or immediate emotional effect or sheer catchiness, you are "destroy[ing]...in your private universe" the possibility of ever actually experiencing other varieties of "greatness" that have any tie to the progressive experience of complexity, wrestling with profound lyrics, hearing new nuances, making new connections, etc. And I don't even mean that as a kind of blanket apologia for the highbrow - like I said, there is also a greatness of immediacy that isn't necessarily just superficiality, and that's fine; it just that you are excluding an awful lot of the experiences that actually make it worth calling a large swathe of music "great" in the first place. And that's where the "devaluing" comes in - you seem to be saying that "great" music is not really worth your time for no better reason than because you could be elsewhere. And is any of this music really that "great" if none of it makes you value a second listen above the next musical item on your checklist?
It's as if you said you wanted to have one bite of food at a thousand different restaurants because you'd heard they each offered a really well put together five course meal (and you praised each to the skies afterwards but never fancied going back); at a certain level it just sounds irrational. Or you wanted to spend sixty seconds each with a million different people because you'd heard they were all great conversationalists. (I am sure the analogies will bite back; I care more about the previous paragraph than whether they work. Just trying to put into words why what you said sounds just plain odd.)
None of which means, I think, that there is no place for spotify, for trying to hear a bunch of albums said to be great at least once each because you only have so much time. I'm doing the same, in great moderation between other kinds of listening. But it sounds like you are taking the rather extreme position that the splendor of spotify is never having to hear to anything more than once. That's where I find it hard to find any desire at all to live in the private universe you seem to be describing. Hyperbole, surely....?
On topic: I am enjoying the Naxos Early Music playlist on Spotify.
It's true, they don't say anything about a hippie girl at Corner. Don't get across to that corner of town much - probably why I've not been in there.
I saw a cute Goth chick behind a record-store counter once, but it turned out she'd just dropped by to visit the (far more typical) fat bearded guy with dirty glasses on who was actually working back there.
Meanwhile, I am, of course, pathetic.
@Scissorman, thanks for the timely mid-afternoon chortle. You conjured up such a vivid picture with so few words.