The Unknown: Public Affection – Death of a Dictionary
According to Prince, the internet is dead. Itunes is about to go the way of MTV and the Dodo. And you know what, he may be onto something. The internet itself is not dead. But getting music via the internet may be hitting its peak. It’s too easy to get music on the internet. There’s too much of it. And when you have too much of something, you stop appreciating it. There was a time when getting an album was an event. You look forward to it for weeks. Saved up for it. Even waited in line for it. Then when you got it, you listened to it…over and over. All the way through. You didn’t listen to 30-seconds of a song than skip ahead. You cherished the whole album. That doesn’t happen anymore. It means…people just don’t care. Or do they?
In the past couple years vinyl has been making a comeback. Even I have gone back to listening to records…and it makes a huge difference. I like the music more. And that’s not all…cassettes are even making a comeback. Cassettes!
I picked up Public Affection, Live’s first demo album, 15 years ago. It took me months to find. I asked friends. Friends of friends. Even random people at concerts. I finally found a cousin of an ex-roommate from South Carolina who burned me a copy and mailed it to me. Getting a copy was like finding buried treasure. I listened to it religiously when I got it. More than their regular albums. Because it was mine.
Now, getting the album is easy. You just need to type the album name into google. And spend a few minutes downloading. And you have instantly what took me months to acquire. It’s just not the same.
The internet may not be dead…but it is time for someone to kill it.
Here is Public Affection – Death of a Dictionary:
3. Good Pain
7. Sister
9. Libra
10. Ball and Chain
Buy Ed Kowalczyk’s new solo album, Alive…now!!
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I was talking to a co-worker about this the other day, which was nice to hear that not only music nerds like us feel that disconnection but even the average music listener has had that glazed over feeling towards how they got music. She even said specificly that she missed going to the record store searching for something maybe not even getting when you went in for,then enjoying the mysterious ride home or to wherever listening to what you just purchased.
I also remember the absolute struggle i went through to listen to cd’s (and then ipods) in my car. normally falling back to listening to mix tapes. I also remember going as far as listening to a cd-player with headphones during long car rides to band practice or even getting far too expensive batteries for a stereo to play music from the back seat of my car. however theres something rewarding in all of that.
I think i might rambled off topic, but i swore when i started this it made sense. oh well, later!
Very Interesting. I haven’t had a similar view here in Anchorage, but I suppose that isn’t too suprising.
What an awesome blog site, cheers for placing this subject matter.