The news broke today that The Eagles are releasing their first studio album in 28 years....through an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart, now the largest retail "record store" in the United States.
VERY provocative! What do you think about this trend? The music business is morphing quicker than Keanu Reeves in one of those dreadful Matrix movies. I still have my sizable collection of vinyl albums and 45s on home-made wooden shelves, untouched for the last 4 years. I have a separate closet which houses my CD collection, numbering in the hundreds. In between I still have boxes and boxes of cassette tapes, all but abandoned.
Feeling ambitious, and prompted by a friend's successful urging that I buy an external hard drive, I have transferred roughly 75% of my CDs (which represent approximately 60% duplication of my vinyl) onto my computer, using ITUNES, which I have come to love...I still listen to music for literally hours each day, between my Ipod in the truck and "random" shuffle on my PC...It is like a 20-hour soundtrack of music I love. I find little pleasure anymore in listening to the radio, other than specific genre non-commercial radio.
I almost feel (don't hit me!) that I've pretty much got what I need and my insatiable thirst for the exciting and latest and greatest new music was quenched somewhere around the time the Ramones called it quits. Sure, there is the occasional new song that I simply MUST have, but in such cases, I usually drop 99 cents for the track at Itunes or just swipe it for free using Limewire. At the ripe young/old age of 51, the media suits me fine, though the aural quality of all those zeros and ones is less--IMHO--than what I used to get through my Technics turntable and my beloved Marantz receiver and those delicious, responsive JBL speakers that followed me through my 20s and 30s.
So what's the future?...More selective tune by tune migration to my ITUNES?...A resurgence of passion for modern recorded music (a New Wave, as they once called it?)?....
When I hear the Eagles are releasing a new album through an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart and Joni Mitchell is contracting with Starbucks, I wonder if I haven't outlived my usefullness....
Just a few thoughts...Thanks for listening....Maybe I can download some software and record this as a Podcast....Maybe the Miracle Ear corporation is interested in what a geezer like me has to say and I can swing something lucrative.....Whaddya think?
Long live rock and roll...
Monday, October 29, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The Price Of Seclusion
Took the afternoon off to meet Jean for lunch and spend some time together.
A (guarded) celebration of sorts; she met with her lawyer and the
judge and signed on the dotted line, thus settling her workers' comp
case, which has been active for 4 years. A pretty decent chunk of
change and since she's feeling better (her neck and back), figured the
time was right. With her physical health returning, the old law of
diminishing returns was inevitable and rather than be declared
"healthy" and dropped, they pay her/us to go away quietly.
Been very unsettling out here in the country battling mice, as we seem
to do each year at this time. Snagged three in traps and it seems
quiet now. Maybe they're all gone. I HATE HATE HATE RODENTIA! And to
make it a perfect week, what with my own obsessive health concerns, we
awoke Wednesday night about 1:00am to a bat or a bird flying around the
bedroom. I was melting down, but after we opened the sliding doors off
our bedroom, we both thought the thing had flow n away and out. All
was quiet on the Western front...until last night (Thursday), when Jean
woke me again around 1:30am cause he was back again. It was a bat and
he hadn't left the night before. Sooo, we (Jean, really--I cowered)
chased him from wall to wall and eventually stunned him to the ground,
where we plopped Max's former water bowl (it's actually a standing
tribute since he can no longer make it up the stairs) and I leapt into
action, bagging him in a trash bag, and then bagging him again in a
heavier trash bag, as he yelped and cried. Ghastly. Brought him down
to the outside garbage cans and properly deposited him away for the
ages (angels?). Called the Health Department today and because we
apparently slept Wednesday night with a bat in our bedroom, they want
to examine the damn thing, and suggest we both start with rabies shots.
Went to the garbage can this afternoon and he was still sturdily
bagged, but still alive. Not sure what to do now, but I have to
somehow get him to the Health Department on Monday morning.
Dian Fossey didn't deal with this much wildlife!
A (guarded) celebration of sorts; she met with her lawyer and the
judge and signed on the dotted line, thus settling her workers' comp
case, which has been active for 4 years. A pretty decent chunk of
change and since she's feeling better (her neck and back), figured the
time was right. With her physical health returning, the old law of
diminishing returns was inevitable and rather than be declared
"healthy" and dropped, they pay her/us to go away quietly.
Been very unsettling out here in the country battling mice, as we seem
to do each year at this time. Snagged three in traps and it seems
quiet now. Maybe they're all gone. I HATE HATE HATE RODENTIA! And to
make it a perfect week, what with my own obsessive health concerns, we
awoke Wednesday night about 1:00am to a bat or a bird flying around the
bedroom. I was melting down, but after we opened the sliding doors off
our bedroom, we both thought the thing had flow n away and out. All
was quiet on the Western front...until last night (Thursday), when Jean
woke me again around 1:30am cause he was back again. It was a bat and
he hadn't left the night before. Sooo, we (Jean, really--I cowered)
chased him from wall to wall and eventually stunned him to the ground,
where we plopped Max's former water bowl (it's actually a standing
tribute since he can no longer make it up the stairs) and I leapt into
action, bagging him in a trash bag, and then bagging him again in a
heavier trash bag, as he yelped and cried. Ghastly. Brought him down
to the outside garbage cans and properly deposited him away for the
ages (angels?). Called the Health Department today and because we
apparently slept Wednesday night with a bat in our bedroom, they want
to examine the damn thing, and suggest we both start with rabies shots.
Went to the garbage can this afternoon and he was still sturdily
bagged, but still alive. Not sure what to do now, but I have to
somehow get him to the Health Department on Monday morning.
Dian Fossey didn't deal with this much wildlife!
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The Roches
I think I probably heard tracks from The Roches debut album soon after it was released in 1979. While I can’t pinpoint the source, it might have been the airplay on WFMU. But I really fell in love with the record (they were records then!) after repeated plays at my friend Maryclaire’s apartment in Montclair. I was 23 and Maryclaire was a “sophisticated” 25 year-old I worked with at a monolithic corporate goliath in Parsippany.
Anyway, MC, as she was legendarily known, had this crummy, walk down apartment somewhere in Montclair--the exact location has become fuzzy over the decades since, and mostly irrelevant to this tale. Whenever a group of us would gather at her place for afterwork socializing and wind down time, the album would invariably end up on the turntable, in heavy rotation with the likes of Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” and something or other by Joni Mitchell.
The Roches’ album became a very specific soundtrack at a very particular time in my life--a very formative and impressionable time, I might add. Maryclaire and I never became wholly intimate--I was too awkward and inhibited and wholly unprepared, thus nothing really ever developed. Our paths drifted with the din and distraction of adult responsibilities, different life paths and even partners. I ended up with Jean and MC ended up with Marc, a nice enough lad who married her and took her away to Ohio where a great job awaited him. I always wondered about the destiny of different endings to the story…
We continued to correspond throughout the next few years, until one evening, around suppertime, the phone rang. It was Marc, regrettably informing me that MC had been killed in an automobile accident on her way to Ohio State early that morning, where she continued to work toward her degree. She left her husband and two year-old Emily. It was beyond tragic and I was deeply affected.
That was probably toward the late ‘80s.
I still listen to The Roches album, although it’s now it’s constructed of zeros and ones, on an Ipod or my computer, having given up the crusade to keep the vinyl experience alive many years ago.
The intimacy of the collection of songs still affects me deeply, the potent harmonies stronger today than ever, it seems. From the whimsical “We” to the ambient and beautiful “Hammond Song”, straight through to the stunning and haunting “Pretty and High”, which concludes the opus. We don’t live in the shadow of New York City anymore, opting for a quieter environment just outside Ithaca, New York. It is, by the way, an absolutely splendid place to grow older (I’m now approaching 52) and smell the flowers, as they say.
As time goes on, I often reflect on those days, MC’s apartment, my own awkward and unfulfilled youth. I even think often and with sadness of the glory of New York City. And while the Towers have come and gone and the world has turned a dark, angry tone, the soundtrack is always the same.
That first, timeless record by Maggie, Terre and Suzzy Roche.
Anyway, MC, as she was legendarily known, had this crummy, walk down apartment somewhere in Montclair--the exact location has become fuzzy over the decades since, and mostly irrelevant to this tale. Whenever a group of us would gather at her place for afterwork socializing and wind down time, the album would invariably end up on the turntable, in heavy rotation with the likes of Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” and something or other by Joni Mitchell.
The Roches’ album became a very specific soundtrack at a very particular time in my life--a very formative and impressionable time, I might add. Maryclaire and I never became wholly intimate--I was too awkward and inhibited and wholly unprepared, thus nothing really ever developed. Our paths drifted with the din and distraction of adult responsibilities, different life paths and even partners. I ended up with Jean and MC ended up with Marc, a nice enough lad who married her and took her away to Ohio where a great job awaited him. I always wondered about the destiny of different endings to the story…
We continued to correspond throughout the next few years, until one evening, around suppertime, the phone rang. It was Marc, regrettably informing me that MC had been killed in an automobile accident on her way to Ohio State early that morning, where she continued to work toward her degree. She left her husband and two year-old Emily. It was beyond tragic and I was deeply affected.
That was probably toward the late ‘80s.
I still listen to The Roches album, although it’s now it’s constructed of zeros and ones, on an Ipod or my computer, having given up the crusade to keep the vinyl experience alive many years ago.
The intimacy of the collection of songs still affects me deeply, the potent harmonies stronger today than ever, it seems. From the whimsical “We” to the ambient and beautiful “Hammond Song”, straight through to the stunning and haunting “Pretty and High”, which concludes the opus. We don’t live in the shadow of New York City anymore, opting for a quieter environment just outside Ithaca, New York. It is, by the way, an absolutely splendid place to grow older (I’m now approaching 52) and smell the flowers, as they say.
As time goes on, I often reflect on those days, MC’s apartment, my own awkward and unfulfilled youth. I even think often and with sadness of the glory of New York City. And while the Towers have come and gone and the world has turned a dark, angry tone, the soundtrack is always the same.
That first, timeless record by Maggie, Terre and Suzzy Roche.
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