like a pig rolling in shit

this is typical, vintage dylan jones. the dude's a fashion man not a music fan and this has *always* been true of him. i remember subbing the most apalling piece by him for a special fashion pullout when i was freelancing at the sunday times magazine about five years ago. he wrote that "the face of popular music today was not shaped and formed by groups of surly young men from brooklyn" (surly = black btw) "but by fashion-show djs such as jeremy healy"!!!
i shit you not.
the raw copy was unbylined (probably because he was editing the supplement and thought everyone would know what he had written). upon reading it, i cracked up laughing and said "what fucking wanker wrote this?" he was about 2ft behind me. needless to say i wasn't booked to work there again.
btw, i'm at the airport at houston and i'll be posting abt this BRILLIANT trip tomorrow/the day after.

So none of you feels there's anything to be said for having ones entire collection--in my case, more than half of my life--ready to listen to anywhere, anytime (with good etymotic er-4 sound attenuating canal-phones)? I feel like I've begun to connect more fully to the process of my musical appreciation--which is nearly like saying, the process of my life--to know why, exactly, I've been so damned nuts over music for so long. I feel like I'm beginning to know that it does indeed add up to something, that I haven't just been letting a few life-changing musical moments drive an otherwise scattershot addiction.

In the sense that we've all created collections we're incapable of making it through even in a year of listening---aren't we all horders? So what's wrong with being able to "use" that horde? In my opinion, it makes it *less* silly/materialistic/fetishistic and more about the music itself.

How does the fact that a portable, massive-storage (mine being 100GB, ~20,000 songs) makes it possible to listen to music in very casual, "non-ideal" ways (assuming ideal means "intently, to the album as an total artwork") make it any less likely that we'll take the time we used to take to listen intently, too?

Fundamentally, I feel like my player (not an iPod--I resent them as fashion objects, I'm glad mine is ugly and many times more functional and less expensive) makes my collection more justifiable and less absurd. I have a natural nostalgia for physical media, and I'll always buy "hardcopies" of the music, as long as they're available--but especially if the sound quality/bitrates the average person is using to mp3 continue to increase, I'll be able to say goodbye to that physicality, if it means people are listening more/often/broadly/deeper to music.


And aren't most of the people listening "poorly" via their iPods people who listened passively/aquisitively/faddishly to music beforehand? Even if driven by an aquisitive, "must fill 5/10/20/40 gigs" mentality--it seems at least possible that the average person, who doesn't legally own enough music to fill 5 gigs, might stand a chance of finding something that they enjoy regardless of its "approved" status--a possibility of meritocatic evaluation.


As for the "flatness" of high-quality (VBR base-224) mp3s (or CDs for that matter)---I'm glad my ears are apparently not good enough to hear what's so great and live and warm about vinyl. Mine are usually too distracted by the pops/dust/warping/lagging to notice. And cassettes---I loved making mixes, recording the radio, etc.---but good riddance! Tangling, breaking, grating junk.

blissblogger said:

i noticed this almost as soon as i got a CD player with a remote in 1990 or so ... that even with my favorite albums, on CD i'd almost never listen to them all the way through

in fact -- unless it's a mix-CD or comp or sort of backgroundy music -- i don't think i ever let CDs run all the way through -- the only time i treat them as Integral Artworks To Be LIstened All the Way Through in One Sitting is when i'm reviewing them

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I'm a child of the CD generation and I always/often listen to CDs all the way through and I try to collect some too.. I'm definitely one of those people who kept listening to an album till I finally got it (eg. Boredoms). I like to think that I've sped that process up but I've probably only gotten lazier.

But yeah, I think there's something the analogy of iPods/mp3 to people selling their vinyl collections when CDs came out...

I'll probably get an ipod to listening to online programming that doesn't have a place on corrupt mainstream radio but I'll wait till they're more affordable (eg. ~$50 AUD).

As for ipod/walkman solipsism - yeah I've noticed that too, but isn't that part of how consumerism is geared? eg. personalised ("atomised") desires and fulfilment etc. I notice it especially with some people's attitudes to their car as a wholly self-contained sensorium packed with everything down to DVD-player (why on earth would you want to watch a DVD in the car??) and literally sealed off from the rest of the world which is just another view on a screen.

pro

also, there's the listening thru headphones
things you'd never have checked that way before
cos you'd have picked something else if limited to what you could carry (walk/disc-man)
or at home giving a special headphone listening

hear music in a new way all the time - believe - deeper

plus if your environment's changing, it can change your listening mood - add to it
instead of sat in the same old room

D84 said:

But yeah, I think there's something the analogy of iPods/mp3 to people selling their vinyl collections when CDs came out....

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I don't. For me, it's been more like it's turned my own collection into the record shop of my life---except in order to re-access the albums, I don't have to buy them another time. Ripping them, even just a few at a time, and putting them into the "recent rips" folder on my player--it's like getting new records, except some of them are already embedded into my life. It also helps, probably, that I only know really, really thoroughly maybe 800 of the 2500 or so albums I own. So many of them are semi-new to me--and I doubt I'd ever have had the chances to get to know them as well without 100gb.

Apologies if I sounded like a grumpy luddite yesterday - spent all day ripping piles of vinyl to CD and didn't feel that digitizing music was either quick, nor convenient! Anyway.... Obviously MP3 players have their value, for the reasons mentioned by Ness and soundlike1981, and if I owned one, I'd no doubt use it all the time. I couldn't say whether, carrying my entire music collection around, I'd actually listen to it while on the move. I've got stacks of (n.b. 5-hour-long) minidiscs, but I end up grabbing the same two or three (full of mixes from round here, cheers peeps!) all the time. Some things work while listening on the tube or at your desk, some things don't.

On the subject of the demise of the CD, I just don't see it - other than books, all our day-to-day data is on 5-inch shiny plastic discs. The software, music, film and computer industries have too much invested in them to let them die a premature death.

blissblogger said:

but the thing of walking around the city cocooned in your own private soundtrack -- i've never seen the appeal really -- i like to be exposed to the city's own noise and bustle not shielded from it

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I don't own an iPod, but I'm never without my MD and I have spent many a day strolling around my city with a random minidisc playing. It's the mixture of sounds I love. Earbuds hurt my ears and big cupping headphones just make me sweaty, so I have a set of Sony Streetstyle. Because they sit softly over my ears, the world is allowed to bleed into my music and vice versa. The mixture of the two often lends unexpected poignancy and context to the tracks. I vividly remember walking in St. John's, Newfoundland at the tale-end of a snow storm with SAW2 playing. I sat on a park bench with a grin plastered on my face as the sun came out and twinkled on the fresh snow while the middle of the second disc played lightly in the background. That memory sure beats the hell out of remembering listening to it in my living room.

I've often wondered if that's the effect all those found-sound, musique-concrete types were trying for.

I feel too alienated, not-in-the-picture enough already without walking around in my own bubble. I remember I would wear headphones and do school projects in a public computer lab. I would look up a couple hours later and be surprised that I am surrounded by other people in a big room. It's kinda like sleeping over somewhere and waking up in the middle of the night wondering where you are. Is music really that important that it must accompany every waking moment. It seems neurotic to me.

Also, the listening until you like something feels wrong, not that I did not use to do that when I was young. Maybe going through it is what allows me to dismiss it now that my taste is cultivated. All my favorite tracks now are ones that I liked the first time through.

Bomb Blast Victem's hearing saved by iPod

http://news.ipodworld.co.uk/index.php/weblog/bomb_blast_victim_saved_by_ipod/

I do have an iPod (nods to 2stepfan) though I dont use it all that often.

Interesting that Stelfox has had insider knowledge of Jones being a bit annoying. I remember seeing one of his articles in GQ once which was even more sickeningly narcisstic than this iPod one- a series of photos showing "who's been through the GQ office door this month", basically showing loads of vacuous celebs plus Dylan Jones modelling various designer suits.

Diggedy Derek said:

I remember seeing one of his articles in GQ once which was even more sickeningly narcisstic than this iPod one- a series of photos showing "who's been through the GQ office door this month", basically showing loads of vacuous celebs plus Dylan Jones modelling various designer suits.

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that sounds absolutely ghastly.

i remember d jones' early '80s reviews in record mirror. his review of "nelson mandela" by special aka began "MEGA-DAMMERAMA!" they were generally in that vein.

obv one of the greats. why hasn't matos snapped him up yet to do a book on the first animal nightlife album?

DigitalDjigit said:

Also, the listening until you like something feels wrong, not that I did not use to do that when I was young. Maybe going through it is what allows me to dismiss it now that my taste is cultivated. All my favorite tracks now are ones that I liked the first time through.

Click to expand...

Interesting... older age, cd/mp3-culture, that hipster "I know what I like mindset" all fuel that "if it doesn't grab me within 20 seconds I'm not going to give it a chance" mentality. But there are things that you really need to take time to digest, to seduce you, or to take you unawares.

I've hated or just ignored plenty of music straight off which has gradually meant more to me than the instant sugar-rush of certain pop music - if you love something straight off how can it last? It could be repetition, a different circumstance, reading or hearing something about it, that can open up a track or genre.

Just one example - I remember The Pet Shop Boys' So Hard sliding past me on the radio when released years back, sounding insipid, lame, derivative, thin... Then you start to notice the subtle details of the lyrics ("We've both given up smoking cause it's fatal") - smoking is fatal - ??? - But fatal is there to rhyme with "faithful" in the previous lines ("I'm always hoping you'll be faithful/but you're not, I suppose"), then the meaning of the next line hits you - "so whose matches are those?"- the matches are evidence of the lover's betrayal... like a great short story set to plaintive New Order/Arthur Baker electro-disco, the more you listen the better it gets, sonically as well as lyrically, even the house-lite production has to be entered into and allowed to work its magic, to appreciate the analog synth textures and the emotional power of the chord sequences.

This also applies differently to genres of course - you can't get into a new genre if you think you know what you like already, by definition you won't like something new (- as Badiou shows, by definition the New has to be unexpected, unprecedented, from the outside)...

dHarry said:

the more you listen the better it gets, sonically as well as lyrically, even the house-lite production has to be entered into and allowed to work its magic, to appreciate the analog synth textures and the emotional power of the chord sequences.

This also applies differently to genres of course - you can't get into a new genre if you think you know what you like already, by definition you won't like something new (- as Badiou shows, by definition the New has to be unexpected, unprecedented, from the outside)...

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Even tracks that grab you right away can reveal interesting details later on. I am not saying all the tracks that grab me right away become my favorites but that pretty much everything I call a favorite now grabbed me the first time around. I do change my mind and start enjoying certain tracks that I didn't before but they never become my favorites.

"you can't get into a new genre if you think you know what you like already, by definition you won't like something new".

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It is hard to carry out judgements without knowledge unless one is not acting in good faith (there's gotta be a better way of putting this). At what point are you considered to know something? If I dismiss something is it because I know it and find it uninteresting or is it because I do not sufficiently understant it. If something is truly new then one cannot like it or dislike it.

Why force yourself to listen to something you do not enjoy? Is it for the uncertain prospect that it may reward you in the future? I think a more fruitful approach would be to explore other works in the genre to gain an understanding of the language/context and then come back (or not, if nothing in the genre impresses you) and judge it with a better foundation. But again, at what point is it fair to give up?

DigitalDjigit said:

If I dismiss something is it because I know it and find it uninteresting or is it because I do not sufficiently understant it. If something is truly new then one cannot like it or dislike it.

Why force yourself to listen to something you do not enjoy? Is it for the uncertain prospect that it may reward you in the future? I think a more fruitful approach would be to explore other works in the genre to gain an understanding of the language/context and then come back (or not, if nothing in the genre impresses you) and judge it with a better foundation. But again, at what point is it fair to give up?

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Yes, listening to something you do not enjoy is fairly self-evidently pointless! I was talking more about giving time to allow appreciation, to develop or to allow the unexpected to hit.

But... with free jazz, or contemporary classical, or ambient-industrial (Coil/Neubauten/...), or other stuff that is almost by definition unenjoyable, you can break through a wall of incomprehension/non-enjoyment to appreciate it finally (or not). Maybe there's more to be said for "the uncertain prospect that it may reward you in the future". At what point is it "fair to give up?" Depends on your patience, frustration/boredom tolerance, spare time...

dHarry said:

even the house-lite production has to be entered into and allowed to work its magic, to appreciate the analog synth textures and the emotional power of the chord sequences.

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That's Harold Faltermeyer on production duties. Any idea what he's doing now?

spotted this in 'who's online' - LOTS of chinese bots seem to be harvesting us today,
about the right time to revisit this article and thread though i guess