The Thrill Is Gone: Digital Music
June 13th, 2010
B.B. When it comes to the present state of music, I have to concur with King when he once sang “The thrill is gone,” (sounding better on vinyl album). I’m not one to compare one era to another and declare either greater; music is an art form that must forever progress whether we’re fans of those changes or not. I’m talking about the way we, as admirers, interact and exhaust our music, when I claim the thrill is gone. Let me explain.
I’m a member of a distinct generation. I was born into what some people only a few years younger might call a world of Luddites. Vinyl LPs and turntables were the standard, but as technology marched on, our music became handy. As is usually the case, what we sacrificed in substance, we made up for in convenience.
But then again, what makes my generation distinct is that we entered a world with technological limitations yet welcomed any and all advances. Today, I love my iPod. I acknowledge it. The prospect of thousands of songs at my disposal is fantastic. And let’s face it, hauling crates of records, not to mention turntables, amps and speakers along with me is just plain unfeasible. Still, awash in a sea of MP3s, torrents and burned CDs is the very lore that made music such an integral part of my life.
Vinyl Albums – complete with the cover art, jackets and linear notes – were more than just a collection of songs. They supplied a personal introduction to numerous artists, doorways by which you felt a deeper relation to their music. Every vinyl lp was a case study where you’d go along with the lyrics in that idyllic marriage between the written word and melody. You learned who wrote the songs, who produced them, where and when they were recorded and any other bit of information you could put away in your memory banks. Even the sequencing, that little nod from artist to listeners that said, “This is how I’d like you to hear my music” was important. Listening to music was a dynamic activity, barely an impassive reflection.
Now we’ve traded songs titles for track numbers, cover art for skins and perhaps the worst of all, quantity for knowledge. I’ve realized many records in the past year that I’ve completely loved. Even so, beyond a band’s name and maybe the name of the vinyl album, I don’t have much for you. I can inform you which tracks are my favorites but to identify them would be just an educated speculation. I couldn’t isolate them out of a magazine. I can’t even tell you their names. They are faceless, nameless, a mere collection of riffs. I can pick and choose the songs I love, destroying the lost art of the album. The thrill, B.B., is really gone.
If this is the tragedy of digital music, then it is a sad denouement: the lost sense of a shared culture that we experience through music. The mere analytics of bit rates or boasting of our iTunes libraries belie the argument at hand. They’re a red herring, a track that only indicates to real heartbreak. I fancy my music to have heart again, to have a soul, to be mine. I want it to be human again.
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Categories: MP3 Player
