(Don't ever say I don't go for the big themes, hear?)
I was thinking about the experience of listening to LP's - that means "Long-Playing" albums, for my younger readers - and I felt a shock when I realized that, beyond questions of pure sound quality or the demise of album artwork and liner notes, there is something more fundamental that has vanished along with the disappearance of the vinyl record album.
It's this: during the heyday of the rock folk jazz pop album, most everyone I knew listened to every song on a record, in sequence, both sides. Because that's the default, when listening to a record - you put it on the turntable, drop the needle, and let it ride.
In light of this listening mode, some musicians (and/or their producers) chose the order of the tracks with great care, in search of the best flow and variety; some even took on the challenge of having the album tracks tell a unified story (with mixed results, but, hey, better to go down swinging, eh?)
In any event, for at least a few years, songwriters and musicians at least did their best to have every album track possess enough substance to not sound lame compared to the other, better-known tracks.
Now - not so much. Although musicians still release collections of new material available to buy and to listen to just like an album, I know that's not the way most people buy or listen to music. I'm not going by industry stats here; I'm just going by my personal knowledge that neither of my kids has purchased more than one or two CDs/albums/cassettes/whatever in their whole lives. They do listen to plenty of music. Only, it's on their iPod or iPhone. On "Shuffle".
And yes, I realize I've strayed deep into geezer territory here.
But when we had the whole experience of listening to songs in a given sequence, we had the opportunity to experience two different categories of happiness; first, when listening to a brand-new album, it was like opening a dozen presents, one after the other; then, over time, we became so deeply familar with the song sequences that, in the silence between tracks, we could anticipate the opening sounds of the next song so vividly that when they actually played, it was as satisfying as a promise being kept, or as thrilling as a dream coming true.
I was thinking about the experience of listening to LP's - that means "Long-Playing" albums, for my younger readers - and I felt a shock when I realized that, beyond questions of pure sound quality or the demise of album artwork and liner notes, there is something more fundamental that has vanished along with the disappearance of the vinyl record album.
It's this: during the heyday of the rock folk jazz pop album, most everyone I knew listened to every song on a record, in sequence, both sides. Because that's the default, when listening to a record - you put it on the turntable, drop the needle, and let it ride.
In light of this listening mode, some musicians (and/or their producers) chose the order of the tracks with great care, in search of the best flow and variety; some even took on the challenge of having the album tracks tell a unified story (with mixed results, but, hey, better to go down swinging, eh?)
In any event, for at least a few years, songwriters and musicians at least did their best to have every album track possess enough substance to not sound lame compared to the other, better-known tracks.
Now - not so much. Although musicians still release collections of new material available to buy and to listen to just like an album, I know that's not the way most people buy or listen to music. I'm not going by industry stats here; I'm just going by my personal knowledge that neither of my kids has purchased more than one or two CDs/albums/cassettes/whatever in their whole lives. They do listen to plenty of music. Only, it's on their iPod or iPhone. On "Shuffle".
And yes, I realize I've strayed deep into geezer territory here.
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