Eighty five didn't seem that long ago/Flying paper airplanes out my bedroom window/E-Street band playing loud and clear/Down Bound Train ringing in my ear-Watson & Nash
Somewhere around 1982-83, my small but growing music collection was equally divided between LP albums, 45s and cassettes. I'd inherited the best of 1950s pop music, mostly my parent's old 45s and a huge collection of LPs dating from the early 60s through the late seventies from my two older brothers. My musical repertoire consisted of everyone from Little Richard and The Everly Brothers to The Beatles and Neil Diamond. I also had a steady diet of smaller acts like Huey 'Piano' Smith and Cozy Powell. As long as I can remember I was in love with both music and lyrics. I enjoyed the mood that both conveyed. I was also in love with the experience owning albums, those musical worlds created by various artists. With my recorded player blasting in the background, I'd pour over LP liner notes and gaze at the colorful album artwork. I wanted to know everything I could about the recording artist and the players on their team. Billy Joel and Elton John were heros of mine. I remember memorizing the names of the band members and studio players on their earlier albums. I could identify their 'licks' even if they were playing on other albums. I can't forget those sunny summer days, with my bedroom window open, smell of honeysuckle winding through my red carpeted bedroom and Dobie Gray's 'Drift Away' playing in the background. The scent of the outside world met the smell of the freshly ripped plastic that I'd torn off my latest album find. The white painted walls of my room were filled with fold-out posters that I'd found inside of albums I'd purchased. Laying across my dark blue bed cover were open album covers and their inner sleeves pulled out so I could read the lyrics while the records played. Owning an album, something tactile, seemed to connect me with the singer/songwriter on the other end. The unveiling of a new album of one of my favorite artists was an experience that bordered on the spiritual for me. Smell, touch, visual, sound. I'd save my $5 weekly allowance up so I could walk the aisle of the music section in our little local department store and make my next selection. Once purchased, I wouldn't just drop the needle on the radio hit. I'd let the album play, side one, track after track, then side two. I'd hoped to discover something intriguing and moving hidden around whatever 'hit' had been pushed to us over the radio waves. Again, the album as a whole was an experience.
By the mid eighties, around age ten, I'd started my own formal music lessons. Amidst learning scales and exercises on the piano, I'd listen to my album collection and pull out various 'riffs' that I'd found here and there on different songs and incorporate them into my own elementary studies. Without this vast landscape of musical offerings to emulate I would have probably stopped my interest in formal music education at the scales. The printed lyric on the inside sleeves of the albums greatly influenced the small poem-songs that I'd began to write. I could see the words jump off the page that were moving me as I listened to these songs. …but the print got smaller.
Remove the needle from your record player, pop in a cassette tape and fast forward a few years to the late 80s. I'd started buying cassettes to replace my albums. All my friends were getting Jam boxes and walkman devices…You couldn't play a record on those. You needed a cassette! I have to admit that I was, at that point in my life, more apt to fast forward to the hit. Still, I'd accidentally land on a 'B-side' (or whatever we were calling it) and fall in love. By 1989 my friends parents began to purchase them CD players. CD players? I remember being confused on how we were supposed to play our records in these CD players. I was confused. At the time I thought they were devices that just made your older records sound better. Seeing that it was a completely different medium of playing music, I stuck with my collection of LPs and cassettes. I'd already invested in this huge collection of music that served me just fine and CD players were still a bit pricey at the time. While hanging out at friends houses listening to music, we could migrate directly to the 'main' song. No more fast forwarding and rewinding, getting there too early or late and having to listen to one of the unknowns. You could also put the song on repeat or if you were at a rich kid's house, he might have an automatic disk changer, where you could go to your favorite song on a different disc…Allot easier than getting up and dropping the needle on the record player to your favorite song or having to change out and re-sleeve your albums. By the time I was sixteen I owned my own CD player. The majority of my musical purchases were still cassettes, primarily because the 1990 Ford Tempo that I was driving had a cassette player and no CD player. Even with the changes from album to cassette (we'll forget about 8-tracks) to CDs you still got something tactile. You could flip the lid on a CD case, fold out the artwork and read the liner notes. You could still enjoy the images from the pricey photoshoot. Tactile. Touch, Visual…Experience.
I was in college in the early nineties, when the internet bloom hit. I didn't spend too much time back then on the internet because our only provider was dial up, even in my college town. During this time period, I'd also lost a little bit of interest in what was happening in the commercial music world. I'd taken the route of studying music at the University and had my head wrapped in Wagner scores and Bach Inventions. I'd traded my musical experience of being an outside spectator for becoming a performer and creator of music myself. Claiming both Piano and Trombone as principal instruments in college, most of my time was spent studying scores and memorizing sheet music for countless performances. Symphonic, jazz and chamber music was my daily regimen. While my eyes and ears were lifted away from the pulse of commercial 'radio' music a change was taking place.
Technology will eventually screw those over who make their living in entertainment and the performing arts. Enter mp3 player! You could now download your music directly from the internet. Labels were scratching their heads. The writing was on the wall. Downloading would eventually bankrupt the music industry. The industry recognized that legislation would need to be passed to protect the artist, songwriters and labels. Before the industry could get the foundation laid to build a shelter from the impending storm Napster (in it's original form) entered the scene. Everyone from college kids to housewives in Texas were filling their computers with hundreds and sometimes thousands of free downloaded songs. No attention was given to how this was affecting the pocketbooks of the songwriters and artists. No one cared…but there was still hope. People were still buying CDs. True, they were on the decline but people were still buying them.
Somewhere along the way the world got smaller and our attention spans got shorter. There was a huge shift in our consciousness, in the way we connected to our world. Dial-up was replaced by cable modems and DSL. Our computer kept getting faster. The world was and still is, at our finger tips. We can now shop, play games, conduct business, date, read books, watch movies, listen to music and even live second lives all online. The experience of owning various tactile products, such as CDs and books, have been replaced by the ease of having your whole world exist in one thin 19 inch flat rectangular device. The arts and entertainment, while initially experiencing the gains of using this device as a means of easy exposure are now suffering at it's fingertips. Illegal downloading has a choke hold on the music industry and it's face is turning a deeper shade of blue. Be sure to read the blog I posted on November 9th entitled 'The LimeWire Debate'. Digital Downloading has forced the industry into a position of breaking 'tracks' instead of 'acts'. Gone are the days of watching a single artist develop through the years and mature in their sound. Gone are the days of musical experimentation with artists. No more Elton Johns, no more Billy Joels…A hit has to be produced immediately and mass marketed and if it doesn't stick, the artist is gone. There is no time or money to allow the first album to do 'just o.k.' The artist has got to knock it out of the park their first time up to bat. There is no artist development. Artist development was done in the old days. Those days are gone. If the framework was the same in the late 1960s early 70s, Billy Joel would have released 'Cold Spring Harbor' and would have been dropped from his label because it wasn't a big enough hit. We would not have 'Piano Man', 'Just The Way You Are' or 'Uptown Girl'. Elton John would have been dropped after 'Empty Sky' and we wouldn't have 'Crocodile Rock', 'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me' or 'Candle In The Wind'. Very few artists are truly allowed to grow and get to the great stuff. So many extraordinary artists are being lost under this new system. There are too many artists some deserving, many undeserving being sent through the turnstiles. Those with a relative hit and the money to market it continue on while The Beach Boys are sent home.
A whole generation is coming up void of that magical 'experience' of devouring an album note by note, line by line. It is rare that a culture is created around an album. Say farewell to the days of concept albums like 'Dark Side of The Moon', 'Pet Sounds' or 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's sad. I hope we can somehow get back to that old all encompassing aural, tactile experience of owning a collection of songs released by a smaller, more select group of artists. I hope the industry figures out a way to market the experience again.
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