Author: Jon Amor
www.jonamor.com
Ladies and gentlemen, the album as an art form is in serious danger.
As I spend these days slaving away with my guitar trying to find THAT chord progression, searching my soul for lyrical substance and trying to think of cool titles for my next album, I can't help thinking that the way forward is to write and record one song at a time and stick them on iTunes, one at a time.
Why? Because increasingly, the world's music-listening population is on a diet . It’s a bite-sized diet, and according to recent statistics (ok, believe them or not, but there’s no smoke without fire) the latest generation is apparently unable to sit and listen to a song from start to finish. The urge to ‘flick through’ one’s playlist is apparently too hard to resist, and the need for constant change in stimulation is reducing music to the same level of disposability as any daytime TV program on any of our hundreds of channels.
I still do not own an iPod or any kind of portable MP3 player. I have resisted it for years now, and my resistance is reminiscent of my stance in the late eighties and early nineties, when the Compact Disc was establishing itself in the market and condemning the vinyl LP to the land of the dinosaurs.The first CD was produced in 1982, and by 1985 the medium had established itself to such an extent that the days of vinyl were widely acknowledged as numbered. Stubborn as I am, I didn’t own a CD player until 1993, and that was only because my old record player gave up the ghost. I didn’t like compact discs; they were so SMALL. I was used to going out to PR Sounds in Devizes, flicking through the racks of vinyl which adorned the shelves like works of art, picking the album of my choice and carrying it home in a carrier bag specifically designed to accommodate a twelve inch record sleeve.
Once home, I would carefully remove the vinyl from the sleeve, place it respectfully on my turntable and, with no small degree of reverence, lower the needle onto the outer edge of the disc. As my speakers breathed the lengthy, warm sigh of a record revolving at 33rpm, I would sit back on my bed, open up the sleeve like a broadsheet newspaper in front of me and await the opening strains of the first song.Let me stress that point; I would listen to the opening strains of the first song. I didn’t really have an option – trying to position the needle between tracks two and three would have been a hazardous business.
One could miss the first few notes, or even worse end up scratching the record. Besides that, though, I didn’t want to skip to track 3. I wanted to listen to the album in its entirety from start to finish, with a brief interlude in the middle to turn over to side two, exactly as the artist would have wanted it to be heard.With the arrival of the compact disc, however, there came a new attitude towards music. The CD format allowed you not only to skip through tracks at the touch of a button, but actually change the running order of the songs with the ‘shuffle’ function. All of a sudden, that nice, chilled out track that the artist chose as the perfect way to close his latest collection of songs could very easily pop up right at the start.
And it gets worse. In the age before the compact disc, that music-obsessed teenager lounging on his bed, soaking up all the information on the album sleeve like a sponge, would glance back at the track listing at the start of every song to see what it was called. He’d be seduced by titles like JJ Cale’s “Super Blue”, baffled by Led Zeppelin’s “D’yer Mak’er” and faintly titillated by The Rolling Stones’ “Starfucker”. But with the arrival of the CD, songs were suddenly referred to by their track numbers, presumably as a result of the LED display on a car stereo. I once received an email from a fan who was extremely enthusiastic about my music, yet seemed incapable of remembering any of the titles – if, indeed, he’d ever bothered to see what they were.
“I have all three of your albums, Jon, “ he informed me, “ The second one is my favourite – I listen to it non-stop in the car! I especially love Track 5!”So, there we have it. Track 5 on the second one is his favourite.The iPod, to its credit, does at least have a format which accommodates song titles and album titles, so I guess that’s progress. And I will say this, ladies and gentlemen – I am acutely aware of the tendency of guys my age to look back at days gone by through rose-coloured spectacles, and remember things to be much better than they actually were. I’m also acutely aware that I’m full of crap, and it’s highly likely that I’d hate having to get up halfway through a record and turn it over. And no, I haven’t forgotten that vinyl records get scratched and jump right at the start of your favourite Angus Young guitar solo.
I am, however, perfectly willing to put my nostalgia to the test, so I have combed ebay and treated myself to an old-fashioned record player.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
Now, where did I put all my vinyl?
