Showing posts with label records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label records. Show all posts

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Jaded



No, I'm not jaded, but I think the music-buying public is.

Maybe it's supply and demand. The more accessible music is, the less value people place on it.

I hate to use that old, "back when I was a kid", but I will anyway. Back when I was a kid, it took me awhile to save up a dollar to buy a single. So, I had to be judicious, and really consider my purchase beforehand, since it would be awhile before I would have enough money to buy another.

It was fun, really. There were two record stores in my town, but Poppler's Music was the best one; the cool one. The one that where all the hip ten-year-olds loitered on a Saturday afternoon, to the consternation of the shop-owner, no doubt. They'd have the latest hit song blaring over the speakers. It was a lure, I tell you. A diabolical marketing scheme. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five. They wanted nothing more than to make you part with your dollar in change that you'd saved up from weeks of doing dishes and euphemistically "dusting furniture".

Then, once you'd finally decided on the Righteous Brothers, you'd take that record home and wear the grooves off it.

You appreciated that record. Hell, you memorized it. It was part of your sorry collection of singles that basically consisted of "Last Train To Clarksville" and "We Can Work It Out".

Why do I know every nuance of those songs? Because I played them about three thousand times on my little tinny record player.

Today, you listen to a song; not even the whole song, and click! Time to move on to the next one!

Music is disposable.

Entertain me now! I'm busy! I can't spare the time! Gotta move on; gotta keep moving; moving.

That's the deal with music today. Nobody has the time.

So, humor me if I like to relive a time when we really got to know the songs. I like that.