freeform goodness

Just a few random musical thoughts. I was going to write a really long music entry, but it’s Friday night and I probably ought to be social instead, so here are some “notes”, I guess…

In late 2003, it’s quite acceptable to talk about really liking the work of a given production team (say, Timbaland, or the DFA, or the Neptunes) almost independent of performers. Even during periods of singer-songwriter and/or rock-god dominance in days of yore, you might find yourself following the work of a Trevor Horn or a Butch Vig or a Giorgio Moroder, but not to this extent. Interesting.

One of the dubious pleasures of getting to be a auld f***er is that you find yourself buying albums by well-hyped young bands, only to find out that you bought the albums they’re ripping off when they were brand new. The first time this happened in a major way to me was with Elastica (Wire), but these days it’s an absolute deluge: Interpol (Joy Division), The Rapture (the Cure, Gang of Four, first couple PiL records), British Sea Power (Echo & the Bunnymen) I don’t really mind this — theft from one’s elders has a long and storied history in popular music.

The last few physical CDs I’ve purchased have had sizeable, colorful booklets with lots of artwork, lyric sheets, nice, heavy paper, etc. I wonder if this is a conscious response to P2P, or just a coincidence. Regardless, I throw them in the CD-ROM drive once, encode them (usually as 160K AAC files these days), throw them into the shelves, and never look back. My love of those objects is just not enough to overcome the convenience of instant random access and the Power of the Smart Playlist. The record industry still needs its own version of the DVD commentary track, the one feature that’s compelling enough to turn casual copiers into purchasers. They’re not there yet.

I’m not sure what to say about Steve Jobs’ interview with Rolling Stone, except, yeah, that’s pretty interesting.

:: Dave Walker 19:50 (EST/EDT) [+] ::

:: [/entertainment/music]
:: tags: music

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