As a society we are losing some cool shit. Technology is great don't get me wrong, but sometimes it washes away something that really shouldn't have died, that didn't have to go away but simply faded into Bolivian (God bless you Iron Mike). Lots of (mostly crazy) old men will swear to you that there was nothing better than listening to baseball on the radio. AC has moves us off our porches in the summertime. Nobody has a pen pal in the 4th grade anymore (I wonder what Justin from Toronto is up to these days). And...I miss albums.
That's right, I miss that experience of just listening to an album again and again, in order, so many times that the songs just meld together and you know every word every riff every transition every everything. SMASH by the offspring? Fantastic album, but listening to the songs one at a time at random just doesn't do it justice. You've gotta let it breath, let it build, until by the end it's impossible not to sing (or yell) along. I haven't played August and Everything After start to finish in maybe 15 years but I still know what song "is next" anytime I hear one of the 11 tracks. And let's not start on something like a 7 track DMB live album that you almost can't listen to track by track; it's just not the same.
So you know what I did? I bought the Fun. album and am rockin' it start to finish once or twice a day. And it is awesome. So remember that just because technology has offered you a new way to do something doesn't mean you have to comply. Sometimes things don't change for decades because they are just swell as is.
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5 comments:
Still love baseball on the radio. But I'm spoiled by having Bob Uecker as my team's announcer.
The concept of an album (not to be confused with 'concept album') is something I discuss on the radio often.
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You lost me when you brought up DMB
DMB is one of those things that has become a caricature of itself almost. Originally everyone liked them, or so it seemed, so everyone pretended to like them, too, then it became clearer and clearer that lots of people didn't really like them, so now it's almost become cool to say you never liked them in the first place.
Anyway I liked them from the start, like them less now, but still have a two disc live performance they did that is part of my musical history that I think is awesome.
[x] listens to baseball on radio
[x] buys albums
[x] writes letters and sends through the USPS to 11th grade pen pal
[?] old guy
Also, I think we probably listen to the same radio stations but impressively manage to have completely orthogonal musical tastes.
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