...And We're Back

Hey kids, I'm finally all moved into my bodacious new room and the new year all begun in earnest. Classes don't start for another few days, but everything's already starting to pile in. At any rate, I've decided that I'll be posting on a regular basis every other day during the weekdays -- that is Tuesday, Thursday, and with an occasional special feature on Saturday, if something strikes me.

----------------

I've been thinking alot recently about the mental "landscape" of experiencing music has shifted in an iPod/mp3 player era. Specifically, in an enviroment with the mass portability of large quantities of music, it seems to me that we should see two major phenomena. (Especially with the recent release of the new iPod Shuffle, which is, well, really freakin small

First, the practice of listening to whole albums through is, in a large part of the population, dead. Having music infinitely shuffalable and the power of OurTunes constantly broadening the range of music that we can access and switch between lends itself to a sporadic and "jumping-around" style of listening.

Second, though somewhat less uniquely, the everyday experience of music is now very much in tandem with other everyday activities. That is to say, we now are constantly accompanied by music. It always appears with other phenomena.

In some ways, this is good. I believe that larger access to music and a constant connection to it is going to develop a generation of kids with whom genre has no real bearing. Essentially, I feel that genre-tribalism is going to go down. Slowly, we should see a general bleeding as artists raised in this generation accept the remix of a broader level of music. (I think I'm going to develop this one at some point -- I'm also still waiting for Classical-Punk)

In other ways, this is bad. The "album as complete experience" concept has largely been lost. While we might purchase a CD and listen it all the way through the first time around, the flexibility of iTunes has allowed us to quickly pick, mix, and reshuffle any particular listing of tracks with others according to our taste. While obviously expands enjoyment and increases the ability for the listener to control his or her musical enviroment, it deprives the "concept album" of its original strength to control a mass audience. In short, it lends itself to a reconstruction of the album as merely a "mix tape" of good songs from a band. No more, no less. Musicians are known for their songs, not their albums.

I mean, I think it's a pretty interesting question to ask whether or not a band like Pink Floyd would be able to reach such ridiculous heights as it did a few decades ago.

Against this, I'd present a conceptual event to hold music screenings. Essentially a movie screening, but simply with an entire album. You would sit in an auditorium, the lights would dim, and you would just experience the recording. If anything it would remind us of a begone era, if not actually preserve the idea of the long-length album.