Topic E, Part Two: There will always be a bit of my heart devoted to it.
I think I'll always have a use for it. I just hope there'll always be record stores to go to.
-- /a, "The Lost Art"
Agreed. There is still something very satisfying about crawling through record stores. It has nothing to do with a highly consumerist, stereotypically feminine, love of shopping -- that is the force that propels me into the nearest H&M whenever I am within two miles of one. Maybe this love of hanging out in and bringing home goods from music shops is a characteristic of being old, of having spent more than half my life (thus far) without the luxury of importing songs right into my home from the magical Internet universe. (The i-verse, ha-HA!)
It's not like I don't download songs and load them onto an MP3 player with a thousand other tracks. Most of my enjoyment of music is accomplished without a trip downtown and without the help of a (more often than not) haughty record store clerk. If I like the music enough, though, chances are I will end up holding the CD from whence it comes in my hands, eventually placing it in my beloved collection with a thousand other albums.
[Aside: "the CD"! I guess I really am all-digital now; I remember when I used to buy vinyl and vinyl alone, though that was when I was very young and under the impression that a vinyl record was better than a cassette tape because the cover art was bigger. I soon came to appreciate the warmth of a good vinyl record, but was ultimately seduced by the relative clarity and longevity of the compact disc...and then came the clear, brilliant, ageless MP3. Sigh. Really, though, the clincher is the lightweight portability of the MP3 and its players, which is what opened me up to cassette tapes in my tweenage (and teenage) years. I also switched to tapes because they regularly contained bonus tracks that wouldn't fit onto 12-inches.]
Yet it's more than just having the physical product at home, and even more than supporting the artists with whatever portion of the sale they receive. There's something about being in a record store, in person, that makes me feel...happy. I can't explain it any better than that, for which I apologize, but I hope you know what I mean. Again, it might be my age, it might be my overwhelming love of music; maybe it's some High Fidelity-esque fantasy; or maybe it really is consumerism, after all, and I should just admit it. Whatever the reason, it ensures that for every click towards The Hype Machine, there will be at least a half-step towards the racks.
It's not like I don't download songs and load them onto an MP3 player with a thousand other tracks. Most of my enjoyment of music is accomplished without a trip downtown and without the help of a (more often than not) haughty record store clerk. If I like the music enough, though, chances are I will end up holding the CD from whence it comes in my hands, eventually placing it in my beloved collection with a thousand other albums.
[Aside: "the CD"! I guess I really am all-digital now; I remember when I used to buy vinyl and vinyl alone, though that was when I was very young and under the impression that a vinyl record was better than a cassette tape because the cover art was bigger. I soon came to appreciate the warmth of a good vinyl record, but was ultimately seduced by the relative clarity and longevity of the compact disc...and then came the clear, brilliant, ageless MP3. Sigh. Really, though, the clincher is the lightweight portability of the MP3 and its players, which is what opened me up to cassette tapes in my tweenage (and teenage) years. I also switched to tapes because they regularly contained bonus tracks that wouldn't fit onto 12-inches.]
Yet it's more than just having the physical product at home, and even more than supporting the artists with whatever portion of the sale they receive. There's something about being in a record store, in person, that makes me feel...happy. I can't explain it any better than that, for which I apologize, but I hope you know what I mean. Again, it might be my age, it might be my overwhelming love of music; maybe it's some High Fidelity-esque fantasy; or maybe it really is consumerism, after all, and I should just admit it. Whatever the reason, it ensures that for every click towards The Hype Machine, there will be at least a half-step towards the racks.
1 comment:
yeah, not really sure what it is about having the physical storage device that is so much more gratifying but what you say is true. Perhaps it's akin to the difference between borrowing a book from the library and owning it. Actually having that big chunk of knowledge (music) in your hands and knowing that it's all yours... *evil cackle*
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