22 posts tagged “music”

Show us something you need to get rid of, but just can't bring yourself to toss out.
Submitted by Felipe Anuel.

Weighing Me Down?

OK, you have got to be kidding me that this is today's Vox Hunt question, because I'd been planning for a while to write this up today. The answer is: my CD collection. It's immense (I haven't counted in a while, but I wouldn't be surprised if I've hit 800). As you no doubt know if you're reading this, I adore music, and I'm one of the last people alive to be buying CDs. But I'm finally getting to the point where I'm wondering if it's worth owning them anymore.

At this point, I buy CDs because I want to support artists; I buy them, I look through the packaging once, I rip them onto my computer, and I put them on the shelf. And that's where they stay. I don't even have a dedicated CD player anymore -- all my music-listening takes place on my computer or iPhone (note that I didn't say iPod -- I should probably sell my 60GB 4th gen iPod, and in fact I might bang it up on Craigslist today and flog it off for a quick $100). I'd love to have a nice stereo set with good speakers, an amplifier, a CD player and a turntable for vinyl records (which I don't own, but am crazy enough to want to collect -- more on that later), but that's pretty far down the list of purchases I need to make for myself, supplanted by a new TV, new furniture, new clothes, new laptop, etc.

So. My CD rack -- as gorgeous as it is -- is, essentially, a piece of furniture or home decor at this point. The rack itself is also structurally compromised; when rearranging my living room a couple months back, I was stupid enough to try to move it to another wall without emptying it completely, and the stress has really done a number on it -- it won't survive another move, be it to another apartment or just another spot in this one. And speaking of moving, God help me the next time I have to pack all of these things up; enough of the cases are cracked at this point already, and as you might expect, they fill a lot of fucking heavy boxes.

I've just embarked on a mission to re-rip everything I have, standardizing on 256kbps MP3 instead of the various bitrates and formats I've used over the years; it makes files a little too big for my iPhone's paltry 8GB of memory, but it matches the Amazon MP3 store, where I'll likely be making a lot more purchases in the future. And once everything's re-ripped, I intend to sell a good number of them -- I've culled out something like 200 discs, many of them singles or EPs I bought for bonus tracks but many of them full albums I've just grown away from (all of which are currently stacked in random places around my apartment, as I don't want to lug them all down to the record store at once but would rather bring them a list and have them let me know if they're interested). I've almost never sold CDs before, so this is a big step. But as you can see in the picture above, that cull only emptied out a small part of that previously chock-full rack. So I'm wondering if, at this point, it wouldn't just make more sense to take the total plunge and sell every single one of them. They have sentimental value, but they're a pain in the ass  to deal with when you live in NYC, and if I try to only keep the ones I care about I'll suddenly find myself justifying far, far too many of them.

But that leaves the question of where I'll get my music in the future. For full albums, I refuse to buy digital-only unless they're high-quality, DRM-free files, like iTunes Plus or Amazon MP3, but there aren't enough labels participating in either of those yet to completely supplant CD-buying, and I'm not principled enough to believe I can just refuse to buy records from labels who don't participate -- I'm going to want that music. I'm also not un-principled enough to just illegally download those records; true, the labels won't sell them to me in the format I prefer, but I don't want to punish artists for their labels' foolishness.

So I want advice on this. Most of you know me and my music-buying habits (and my need for a quick cash infusion) well enough to weigh in here. Should I go for it and liquidate them all? Or am I better off straddling the gap for another couple of years?

Please do the world, and me, and one of my friends, a favor.

What song do you wish would never show up on a karaoke list?

"Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Livin' On A Prayer." Don't get me wrong, they're great and fun and whatever, but I have never once in my life been to a karaoke session where they were not sung. PLAYED OUT. Pick some new standards, folks!

Show us an artist who you wish would hurry up and put out a new album.

Shag Tobacco

Gavin Friday. For God's sake, Gavin Friday. His last (excellent) songwriter album, Shag Tobacco, was released in 1995. That's a Kate Bush release schedule! He's been active -- doing some film work (soundtracks and acting) and a lot of one-off performances in Ireland and Europe -- but for someone stranded here in the States who only gets the chance to enjoy him on record, the wait is becoming kind of painful. The good news is, his voice seems to have undergone a kind of renaissance in the last couple of years; the bits and pieces I've heard of his recent performances have sounded better than ever. So there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Also, it's only been a couple of years since Around The Sun, but the more I hear about the new R.E.M. album the more I want it now now now. Does that count?

You're the DJ: what are the next five songs coming up after the break?

Assuming I've started the pop-music radio station of my dreams, and that I'm adhering to some kind of modern playlist:

• M.I.A. - "Jimmy"
  
• Rihanna - "Push Up On Me"
• Calvin Harris - "The Girls"
  
• Justin Timberlake - "LoveStoned"
  
• LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends (Radio Edit)"
  

So there was the Stereogum LOLZeitgeist contest which led me to I Can Has Corgan which led me to waste about an hour of my life this afternoon making this nonsense:

Line_is_foar

B_my_friend_plz

HAY_GUYS

Mah_cred

Invisible_drummer

Neon Bible

So I walked several blocks across town in bitterly cold weather on my lunch break today, purely so I could finally buy the new Arcade Fire record, Neon Bible. I've been listening to it since shortly after it leaked (was that in January?), and I wholeheartedly adore it -- the first album was a slow-burner for me, but this one immediately smacked me in the face with how great it was. Which is why I'm frankly flabbergasted to have heard from so many people that they consider it to be a disappointment. Nobody's given me a convincing argument as to why yet, of course.

All the negative comments I've seen just remind me of two of my least favorite things about 90% of music fans. These two toxic ideas are pretty much eternal, but the Internet age of music has dramatically increased their exposure:

(1) Music fans don't like musicians as people or artists, they like musicians as stories. The rise of popular-music culture has obviously accelerated the mythologization of artists, and the only musicians who succeed these days are the ones who arrive with a ready-made myth*. This myth or story should preferably be one that can be summed up in a single sentence, since most magazine record reviews have been boiled down to about three sentences -- one to summarize the myth, one to make a snarky joke about it, and one to say something that in some way relates to the record at hand. Once that myth is "on file," as it were, deviating from the script is very, very dangerous. It doesn't even take much of a change to make people feel bitter about your going off "the reservation;" sometimes it only takes the existence of a new set of songs to evaluate that's enough to set people off. Which brings me to my second point:

(2) Everybody is desperate to look like they've got authority.  LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" makes this argument pretty well -- the "I liked them better when" meme has been an immortal fact forever. But in the Internet age, it works like this: A band puts out an album, the myth gets written, people enjoy the record. But when a second record comes around a few years later, everybody feels the need to re-assert the fact that indeed, they listened to that first album, and time has elapsed since that record was released, meaning they have Lived With Those Songs and that They Know What Makes This Band Great. The simple fact of elapsed time has made them an authority, and everybody loves to make pronouncements that feel like they've got weight behind them** -- and nothing makes people feel bigger than dismissing something that's not worthy of them. The creation of this false authority almost demands that they dismiss anything that invites them to revisit their definition of what any given musical act is. This has always been the case -- see U2, dramatically switching styles, for an obvious example -- but that was after six albums. In these hyper-accelerated times, it only takes one album to get everybody started on their deeply rigid conceptions of what an artist is supposed to be or do. Everybody bemoans the fact that record labels don't take the time to develop artists these days, but guess what? Half of you douchebags would never like the second album anyway, purely because it isn't the first one.

Tie the two together, and you arrive at a deeply uncomfortable place for long-term artists to be. Consider R.E.M.: A band that continues to release music that is, even at its roughest, still pretty damn good. Around The Sun might not be the best R.E.M. album -- it might not even be in the top 5 -- but it contains songs that most bands would kill to write. So why are R.E.M. irrelevant? Because they've gone off the script ("Four Georgia boys make jangly pop with mysterious lyrics!") -- point 1 -- and because everybody needs a punching bag  -- point 2.

It's true that some artists, in the completely noble quest to develop and extend their art (I say this is completely noble even though many people seem to feel it isn't), occasionally lose track of or shed some of the qualities that made them initially recognizable and enjoyable -- see The Killers'  more-or-less horrific second album. But hey, guess what -- most of the time, they did it because they wanted to get better! (Some musicians are just contrarian shitheads, but you can generally spot them and disregard them as necessary.) And to bring it back to the specific case, I've still yet to see anyone convincingly articulate what's gone missing from the new Arcade Fire album. All I'm hearing are better songs, better singing, better playing, and my favorite album of the year so far.

* For the record, the Arcade Fire's myth is "Army of pale, underfed misfits play weird instruments and sing wistful songs about children and death!" It's depressing how many band's essential stories contains the words "pale, underfed misfits" these days -- seriously, do we still live in Victorian England and I missed it? Just because you play the guitar means you can't do sit-ups? Also, if you're ever in doubt about what a band's essential myth is, just search Pitchfork for the first review they print of any given band, as that's generally what most hateful indiefolk accept as canon.

** A perfect example: This post.

Audio:  Share a great love song.

Be Mine

R.E.M.