I was having a conversation with a friend last night about this. It’s something that’s sort of popped up in the corners of my mind from time to time, but I haven’t let myself really think about it and see how I feel about it. Until now…
Music has been a big part of my life since I entered the teen years. In the middle of the summer of 1992 (I was 11) I broke my ankle pretty brutally while rollerskating and had a full leg cast on until school started. While everyone else got to go out and play and swim, I stayed home. This is in the years before internet (*gasp*) so I had to find other ways to occupy my time. So I started to listen to the radio. I’d just sit on my bed and listen. Or I’d sit on my couch and watch TV, mostly MTV or VH1. Music rapidly became a huge interest for me. I just got into hip hop and R&B at first. This was when En Vogue and Boys II Men were huge. Snoop Dog wasn’t all about glam and bling just yet, and he and Dr. Dre were singing about drinking Gin & Juice. I could often be found singing along to TLC or Mary J. Blige. And while I loved it all at the time, I still wasn’t enough into it to really get into buying music.
When I was 13 however, something changed. I don’t know exactly where or when it happened, it just did. Rock music somehow came into my focus. I’d ignored it pretty much until then, but something caught my attention. While I can’t be 100% sure I think it has something to do with Aerosmith. They were just putting out Get a Grip. For any older Aero fan – this probably wasn’t a big deal to them. They may have even hated this album. But for me, a 13 year old girl discovering a new passion, it was brilliant. That being said I didn’t buy the album right away. The first Aero album I ended up buying was Permanent Vacation immediately followed by Toys in the Attic, which introduced me to both newer and classic sounds, which ended up being a gateway to everything else.
It all exploded from there. The passion and obsession with rock music, old and new, and with music in general. This was about to rule my life.
My cassette collection started to grow pretty quickly, only to be replaced by CDs a couple of years after that. And this is where the whole point of this post, finally, comes in…
Like a little kid going to the toystore, nothing was more exciting than going to a music shop. Walking around and flipping through the cassettes and CDs. Taking time to just go through the whole shop and see what was there. Looking up bands I just became familiar with to discover their older albums. It was an adventure. I’d only heard what was on the radio and was curious about what else there was. I’d buy albums on a whim just to see what it was about. Or I’d go looking for something specific that I had been waiting to buy. Maybe both. All depending on how much babysitting money I had left.
I’d buy the CD and couldn’t wait to get home and listen. When I got home that would be the first thing I would do: go to my room, close the door, put on the CD and just listen. Sometimes I’d listen several times through in one sitting depending on how I felt about it initially. I would do nothing buy lay on my bed, look up at my posters or glowing stars on my ceiling, or out at the clouds in the sky and just listen. Nothing else. I’d explore each track with my mind and get lost in it all.
I miss that.
I can’t remember the last time I even bought a CD, let alone allowed myself to REALLY listen to it and explore and discover. With the internet and services such as Spotify (scroll to end of post to read up on Spotify if you don’t know it) I have almost everything at my fingertips instantly. I pay monthly for the service and I love it. It makes things easier. I have access to almost every new album I’d want to listen to, as soon as it’s released, including all the singles, b-sides and bootlegs. I can listen to anything I want to, whenever I want to. I can make ay kind of playlist I want, and I can have it all on my phone available when I need it. And if it isn’t on Spotify, I can look it up on YouTube or somewhere else. It’s all there and it’s wonderful. But, as BB King is singing in the background as I type this… “The thrill is gone…”
Like I said, I have everything at my fingertips. Gone are the days of anticipation. Gone are the days of discovering a gem while flipping through CDs or records, or of buying something you don’t know anything about just to give it a listen.
We are rich with music. We can have whatever we want whenever we want. Is that really such a good thing? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just showing signs of aging and sound like everyone else who grows up. However, like with anything else, as soon as you have full access to something, you forget to appreciate it. Everything is so available without any effort, you don’t even need to really LISTEN to it. If you’ve worked for it, gone to the store and spent your money on it, then you feel a certain need to really sit and listen to it.
Kids born today won’t understand what it was like to go out and buy a new album, come home, open it up and listen to it. They won’t be sad about it like I am because they won’t miss it. For me, I feel like something has been lost.
And on top of that, there are the constant distractions. Why sit and just listen to music when I can be texting, surfing, tweeting, facebooking or chatting with friends at the same time? Music is becoming more and more just background noise. I’m not going to say that I don’t still love and appreciate it. I’ve always loved having music on in the background while I work on things. Nothing wrong with that. I think it’s especially necessary for us creative types. But the point is that I don’t stop to really listen anymore.
Of course, I could convert to being a purist of sorts and dump spotify and all similar services and just stick to buying CDs when I can. But it still wouldn’t be the same. I KNOW that everything is available. Forcing myself to do things “the old way” won’t bring back the excitement or emotions. I’ll just be pretending, and I’ll be very aware of it.
I still enjoy music. Boy, do I. It’s my religion and I worship daily. I’m still discovering things and still getting lost in sounds and lyrics. But something has changed, and I feel like something exciting about discovering music has been lost forever.
Of course, my 13 year-old self would dream about something like this. Being able to listen to anything I wanted to whenever I wanted to? Being able to hear the newest album my favorite band put out immediately? Having access to absolutely everything? WOW! What a dream! And, yes, there are so many advantages to it, which is why I use it to its fullest capacity.
Also, no matter what the situation is with the availability of music, nothing can compare to what it’s like to be so young and really discovering the world of music. So I realize that part of this just has to do with age and experience.
But still… something is lost that I don’t see ever being found again. And I can’t help but get sad about it.
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For those who don’t know what Spotify is, it’s a music service that started in Sweden and is only available in a few countries in Europe to date. It’s basically an online jukebox. While it doesn’t yet have everything, I can use it to replace almost everything in my 1000+ CD collection, and it’s growing daily. It’s enough that you’ll be able to find most of what you need. It has full albums, singles with b-sides and bootlegs. It’s free with occasional ads, or 99kr a month (which is about $14 USD) for full access with no ads and availability to play music offline and on your phone). I absolutely LOVE the service and have heard that it’s planning ot launch in the US soon.
I fredags var jag på Rockweeeknd i Kilafors. Jag åkte ditt bara för att se Chickenfoot. Jag stod precis framför scenen, och under uppspelningen av “Give it Up” kastade Chad Smith en trumpinne som slog mig i huvudet! Efter låten hoppade han ner av scenen, gav mig en trumpinne och kysste mig på huvudet där trumpinnen slog mig. Det var SKITHÄFTIGT!
And so my love affair with Aerosmith began and it hasn’t quit since. From those first years of listening to every tape non-stop, and learning to do the logo so that it could be found all over my school papers, binders and backpack, to going to concerts and record signings over the years, and up to today, when I bought 
).
