The Activity of Music

If you're old enough (I'm days away from 40 now), you probably remember sitting around listening to music as something to do. You'd gather a couple of friends in your room, unseal the new "Kiss Alive II" LP (bad example?), and hang out ... just listening to it. It was an activity unto itself.

I recall spending endless hours soaking in Genesis's self-titled album "Genesis," and resetting that needle just to play it over again. And you'd listen to an entire side, if not the entire album, straight through. For one, albums were written back then to have a certain flow to them. Concept albums (recall Styx's "Kilroy Was Here") were meant to tell a story from start to finish. Second, it was kind of a pain getting up out of your bean bag chair to reset the stylus to change songs.

Now, I don't mean for this to be one of those old-fart-whiny posts about the good ol' days, but I do feel this has two consequences. First, I think it'll become even rarer that artists write albums in this way (thanks Green Day and the late, great Kevin Gilbert). Artists -- actually the record labels -- write songs nowadays just for the quick fix. It's formulaic. Throw together 10 pop tracks, 2-3 of which will be released as singles, and market the hell out of the artist until they're all dried up. Too many great artists have been consciously dropped from the marketing machine simply because they no longer have pop appeal (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Bleu, Björk, et al). Second, because listening to music is no longer a past time, truly great music today will be reduced to background noise in tinny earphones during a commute or a tune you can sort of listen to while you play your favorite iPhone game.

That's no sort of life for Ben Folds Five.

Comments

[Barry Graubart]

Matt - I agree with part of your post, but disagree with other parts.
first, music has always been a huge part of my life - I feel sort of like John Cusack in High Fidelity in that I closely align music with various life events (or is it vice versa)?
I think the problem is not the music today, but rather the music discovery channels. I've rarely found that commercial radio stations play the music I like. And today, it seems that American Idol drives much of what is popular.
But, from a different standpoint, there has never been a better time for music discovery.
In my college days (early 80s), my music discovery engine was a mix of friends and college radio. For many years after college, I was lost, music-wise, as I didn't have those constant experiences of hearing new (often obscure) bands.
But today, we have Pandora, Last.fm and music blogs like the Hype Machine. Wow! It's like being in college all over again (OK, not exactly).
Here are a few amazing musicians/albums I've discovered in just the past 3-4 months from these sources:

Imelda May - Love Tattoo (best album of the year so far IMO)
Paloma Faith - Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful (soul like Duffy & Adele but better)
Devil Doll - Queen of Pain (great rockabilly)
And all of these are the type you listen to from start to finish, not skipping songs.

BTW - even though I bash reality TV, my daughter is a big fan of "So you think you can dance" and I've found some of the choreographers use great, yet obscure music. Last year she discovered Roisin Murphy, Mirah, Robert Randolph and others, and also found "daddy's" music like Santogold and White Stripes were cooler than she'd given me credit for.

[Matthew Snodgrass]

@Barry- I see your point. What I meant was that the way music is packaged seems to have changed for the worse nowadays. But I am completely with you on the "fringe" methods of acquiring new music. Pandora and the iTunes radio are two favorites of mine as alternatives to *gulp* terrestrial radio. And thanks for the recommended listening list!