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.