A Handful of Nickels
Why is the album venerated so?
A la carte sales of digital music opened a floodgate of crocodile tears over the death of long-form. Such anguished nostalgia is over-the-top, like remembering the Eisenhower era only for its comfortable Leave it to Beaver perfection.
Imagine a song as a piece of written fiction. How many songs made up chapters in fully-realized epic novels? Now, then, how many of them wound up as anthologized short stories?
Let's face it: an overwhelimg plurality of albums released in that format's prime (call it 1965-2005) were collections of tracks released when artists had 40 or so minutes of music in the can. There may have been consistencies in subject matter (e.g. heartbreak is crucial for songwriting material) or musical style (e.g. pedal steel and sugary strings are ubiquitous in countrypolitan). But rarely were albums conceived with an over-arching plotline spanning both sides.
Ignorance was bliss: albums were loved in part because no better playback alternative existed. Listener interaction with media tended to be a passive relationship, especially in the 70s. Songs were heard in a pre-ordained order; interrupting this succession required effort.
The ways our memories are forged by popular media change with the times. Back then, songs' running order played a part. Later, music video visuals added a new element. Nowadays we can be anywhere with our music, adding immeasurably to the possible links between music and memory. The truth is, we are at a point where track running order is no more intrinsic to the enjoyment of an artist's work than mastering a manual transmission is to learning to drive.
Also, it should be noted that the record industry itself had a business model that often ran wholly contrary to the album ideal. Repackagings of material became ludicrous in their frequency, with little or no concern for tracking order other than, perhaps, chronologically. And say, think back: remember the Various Artists sections in record stores? They were often unshoppable in their breadth.
The dominant form for the first sixty years of recorded popular music was the single or 'side.' Starting in 2005 and continuing until whatever inevitable cataclysm brings the fall of us all, 'one song at a time' prevails. The closer we get to that Zager & Evans future, the more the album era will be seen as an anomalous blip.
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OK. Surely this outrageous lack of respect above should not go unpunished. I'll just slip on my armor-plated boxers and curl up in the fetal position. But first, I wanted to show you some snapshots from one music-lover's history:
That's what I was hearing when I was 14 and hooked on radio and buying 45s. Does the word 'random' come to mind? There is rock, pop, soul, country, crooners, and novelty items. Successive songs were all over the genre map.
In Album Oriented Rock's 70s heyday, if I wasn't too narcotized to change a record on my own, I'd drop the needle on a single song, then swap albums and do the same, and over and over. Even with the 'concept' albums: Sgt. Pepper? 'A Day in the Life.' Quadrophenia? '5:15' or 'Love Reign O'er Me.' Dark Side of the Moon? OK, I'll give you that one.
When I was a radio DJ working at a quasi-free-form station, part of the fun was trying to segue dissimilar styles of music seamlessly.
A few years later, when I had my first home PC, I built a database of about 3600 favorite songs, and then used the computer to randomize them so that I could record 150 or so mix-tapes using two turntables, a cassette deck, and a mixing board.
As CD changers evolved I graduated from a 6-disc player to 18 to 50 to 200 to 400, all with one goal in mind: more diverse randomized playback.
Now? We have reached a pinnacle. And I need never again read a collection of short stories in order according to the table of contents.
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DotDotDot: Interesting article in last week's New Yorker about the role of record labels in the digital era. Even the word 'label' has no meaning any longer. What, exactly, is a label affixed to nowadays?...I am 100% with Mama E Dub in her op-ed about unnecessary noise levels. As one who is trying to stave off an onset of tinnitus, I found the recent spate of hearing-loss articles to be timely. As music-lovers, our aural sense may be our most valuable. If we aren't careful, we're all gonna be hearing cicadas in our heads during the quiet passages...Word has it that on September 1st Apple will have a big announcement about their latest innovation in music commerce. Maybe it's the 'cloudy' iTunes we've been waiting on. Or maybe it's a bold, exciting new foray into $1.59 per-track pricing...Apropos of nothing music-related, my favorite quote of the week: 'Las Vegas is a pilot project to see if man can live on the moon.'
