This Saturday, April 19, 2008, is the inaugural Record Store Day, a pseudo-holiday spearheaded by an alliance of several indie retailer organizations, encouraging all involved to celebrate the culture and aesthetics of such stores and ideally bolster sales. On some level, the day’s very existence appears to be an admission across the board that independent record stores are not doing so well. I was living in New York City for a few months in Summer 2005, and I tried in vain to find the stores that were listed in the then-still-current Yellow Pages – they had all shut down, seemingly at the same time (perhaps more than in any other city, New York’s audiophile has been entranced by the allure of portable, digital media). The indie/used record store is certainly a dying breed, but I have noticed a resurgence of late (I wonder if any stores have reopened in NYC?...). Maybe it only seems that way to me, because Nashville has a healthy independent music scene and is generally behind the nationwide curve technology-wise and it has several of the finest used music stores I’ve ever seen, but there is definitely a different energy in the air than just a few years ago. I can’t speak to such stores’ continued success in other cities, but I’m willing to bet that Electric Fetus in Minneapolis and Amoeba Music in Los Angeles are still going strong.
That these stores are still (or once again) successful is not necessarily surprising; downloadable music is still young, and tangibles like disc insert art, the smell of the packaging, extensive liner notes, etc., are just not there on iTunes. For me, there is still a draw for CDs; whether it is a nostalgia trip back to 1996 or the necessity to listen to an entire album all the way through without shuffle, there are things CDs offer me that I do not get from my iPod, while are still in effect roughly compatible with the iPod, with a little work. Personally, I download a lot of music (some legal, some “extralegal”), but I am probably in the minority in that I still buy a number of CDs. This is the same minority that supported these indie record stores in the 1990s, a time when every city of more than 20,000 had at least one charming mom-and-pop corner music shop. But in recent years, as the market for physical copies of music became more obscure and specialized and most used CD stores have closed their doors, the clientèle has shifted to a wholly different format, one that does not particularly appeal to me, but also one that I admittedly do not completely understand. That format is vinyl.
Audio junkies will use any chance to discuss the merits and storied history of vinyl. They say that it never really went away, that hip bands have always continued to release music on vinyl despite the rise of other formats, and that it “sounds better.” The music market post-1985 is so complex (dare I say postmodern?) that making such broad statements across the entire marketplace are at most false, and at least precarious and cautionable. That vinyl “sounds better” is an argument I will revisit later in this essay. But most likely, all of these notions are tantamount to more than a little bit of revisionist history. The lure of vinyl must be more firmly rooted in the nostalgic, yearning for a bygone era of music that on some level seemed more “pure.” More “enlightened” bands than ever are releasing their new music on vinyl, playing into the great vinyl fantasy.
When I visit one of these stores in Nashville today, some of the patrons in the vinyl section are middle-aged or older (certainly old enough to truly appreciate vinyl’s golden age). The ones that perplex me are the younger twenty-somethings. On a different but related note, my older sister works in marketing and media in NYC. Several of her colleagues are a few years younger, in their early 20s. My sister understandably objected when one 22-year-old girl cavalierly expressed her nostalgia for the 1980s, even though she was hardly old enough to talk at the turn of that decade. Although that girl is most likely not in the hipster set, and she more than probably does not own any vinyl, she illustrates an important point: The 1980s and before were the last time that an era truly had an identity across the cultural spectrum. Think about that lame “1980s Party” your friends put on in college. We can all vividly picture the fashion, the TV shows, the movies, the fads and trends, and especially the music, regardless of whether we were really culturally conscious in the 80s themselves. The 1980s are recent enough where we can almost remember, but they come from a completely different cultural approach and landscape. The 1990s, in contrast, were subtler, more esoteric, more scattered, and more moody. But more importantly, the 90s were the first time when American pop culture as a generalized whole doubled back on itself, mining trends and sounds from decades past, almost in equal measure and without regard for any sort of progression. This halt to goal-oriented innovation marked the end of an American Popular Modernism and the beginning of a Postmodernist sensibility. [For example, grunge was a punk/metal/classic rock hybrid, neo-swing was obviously past-oriented, third-wave ska was already ska’s third wave, and the bubblegum pop revival of the late 1990s was simply a slicker facsimile of similar sounds from 10 years prior. There were, for the most part, no new sounds created in the 1990s. Note: I mean this to be in no way a knock on the 90s, either. It is rather mentioned here to point out how the pattern of artistic progression and creativity fundamentally changed.] Clinging to the 1980s, then, is more than natural: it can seem completely of-the-moment and appropriate to do so (per the rules of Postmodern nostalgia and ironic indie-scene embracing of tongue-in-cheek camp), yet most of us can claim to have been a part of it in some way, whether valid or not!
So at least on some level, vinyl fandom is rooted in Postmodern cultural nostalgia. But of course there’s also personal nostalgia, which is in my opinion much more legitimate and valid. But if vinyl is the main ingredient in most forms of musical nostalgia, why doesn’t it speak to me in any way? I think it has very much to do with my upbringing. My parents were avid music fans, to be sure, and there was more than a small collection of vinyl records next to our living room stereo. Music was always playing in our house and on car trips. But we were a cassette tape family by the time I was old enough to know what was going on. All the best records had been transferred to cassette, mostly for play on road trips (where, to this day, I believe the most basic musical consciousness is conceived). But mostly, unlike many of my fellow musicians and aficionados, I never had a eureka moment in which I discovered by dad’s cache of Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Mott the Hoople, and ELO LPs. That moment never happened because that cache did not exist. The family LP collection was great in doses (my mom’s Paul Simon records and my sister’s Thriller were highlights), but as a family, our cassette tape stash, both original tapes and dubbed records or radio mixes, was more consistent. In fact, I remember our LPs being somewhat off-limits anyway, and requests to fire up the turntable being greeted with groany resistance. But even with a pretty solid set of tapes owned by my parents and older sister, from a relatively early age, I was to hear on the radio what I liked by myself, forging my own musical identity, although still heavily influenced by the sounds and general appreciation my parents taught me. By the time I was old enough to decide that I would spend money on my own copies of music, we had CD players. Cassette tapes had wussy sound, wore out easily, and had no easy way to select tracks. Their handiness on car rides notwithstanding (today my only cassette pangs are for mixtapes, but even those are trumped by mix CDs and MP3 playlists), I felt little resistance leaving that world behind and starting my own musical journey on CD. Vinyl had barely been on my radar.
Years before I could drive a car, I began taking trips to Bismarck’s Music Syndicate Discs & Tapes store by myself. It was owned and operated by a friend of my dad’s, and we had gone there in various family member combinations to visit Mike and peruse tapes since I can remember. When CDs took their hold on my obsessive collector’s sensibility (coins, rocks, toy dinosaurs, baseball cards, pogs, etc., being CDs’ predecessors in that dubious honor), and I began venturing out of the neighborhood on my bike, there was little stopping me. With the average 13-year-old’s overall lack of expenses, and money from mowing the lawn, allowance from parents, and gifts from relatives, I was on fire, solidly planting the cornerstone of my CD collection today, which I can proudly claim as the largest and most-diverse CD collection of anyone I have personally met in my 23 ½ years. For those 5 or so years, before I moved away to college (and perhaps not coincidentally, Music Syndicate shut its doors), the majority of store space was new and used CDs. A cassette tape display on the wall was little more than a cute homage, and the used vinyl section seemed like it had been not touched once since 1989. I understand that Bismarck may not have the hippest audiophile scene, but in my teenage years, vinyl seemed almost sad, a dinosaur that had already been dead and buried.
Of course, I probably overstate things. Someone must have been buying and selling those records. But the fact that vinyl has not died yet, by 2008, seems ludicrous to me. Okay, the physical nature of vinyl’s operation means that the analog sound has more frequencies or something. CD chops out some of those frequencies, MP3 chops out even more. However, I cannot hear any difference between a CD and a high-bitrate MP3. Anyone who says they can is probably a liar. But then, does vinyl sound “warmer” than CD? – I don’t know; that’s kind of up to you and how you have your stereo equalized, and what kind of speakers you own, right? Does vinyl sound “better”? – yeah, if by “better” you mean “scratchier and crackly.” CDs, MP3s, and even cassette tapes far outshine vinyl records convenience-wise. Even if you prefer the sound of vinyl (which I emphatically do not), records are for the most part not portable. You cannot listen in the car or at work. You cannot make a mix-vinyl record for your friends or create a playlist. You cannot listen to records on shuffle (unless you have one of those weirdo jukeboxes). We have been given a gift with modern technology. Music can be a part of our lives almost constantly, everywhere we go, with digital media. To relegate musical enjoyment to those times when we can sit in our living room and listen to a vinyl side seems outdated to me, and very frankly reductive. It used to be that our lives could be split into two parts: listening to music, and the rest. Now, music is intertwined with the events of our lives in an ever-increasing way, and there is no such dualism. Vinyl as a medium is so foreign to me, and again, I don’t really get it, but I honestly do not see the appeal.
Another argument that I haven’t explored is of those who do not download music because the artists get no royalties, but then are completely content to buy a used record. I promise that Boy George sees no royalties from that used Culture Club record that someone bought last week. It was bought once, yes, but there is no new money being exchanged, compensating the artist, writers, and publisher for the new enjoyment by new fans. The same goes for used CDs, of course, but the bitter snobbery of such hypocritical value judgments is usually reserved by the indie rock elite vinyl fan.
Then there is the thrill for collectors to find something out-of-print or rare, only ever released on vinyl. This one I understand, but I have personally always found much more thrill in seeking out rare CDs. CDs had a golden age of only about 10 years, but I am sure more music, both obscure and popular, was released on CD in those 10 years than was ever released on vinyl through vinyl's lengthy history.
Vinyl has a special place in people’s hearts, and I would never want to take that away from anyone. I make so secret that vinyl has simply never been an important aspect of my music life, but I see it in most cases as a weak tie to the past, grounded only in nostalgia (either personal or Postmodern-cultural) for an era since usurped in technology. Technological strides since the advent of the CD have resulted in convenient portable media and musical immediacy never before seen. A fondness for vinyl, often accompanied by an impractical repudiation of all other formats, rejects what contemporary technology can offer to us, and the enhanced musical appreciation it facilitates.
I will celebrate Record Store Day on Saturday by visiting my three favorite Nashville haunts. I will have a great time. But I will stay in the CD section.
April 16, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
An Apology on Liberal Leanings Among Artists and Intellectuals
Last night on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert asked his guest, legendary songwriter Carole King, “Why are musicians so liberal?” She paused for a second, and shook her head, responding earnestly, “I don’t know.” Colbert made a joke, and the question was brushed off as the conversation moved on to a discussion of King’s efforts to help an environmental advocacy group in Colorado.
Colbert is of course playing a conservative-pundit character, and I get the sneaking suspicion that both he (the real-life Stephen Colbert) and King know damn well why musicians are liberal, but still in all, I was perplexed that she did not take advantage of the golden opportunity to explain in it intellectual terms. I have never before seen such a fundamental question leveled at someone capable of answering it in such a wide-reaching (and ultimately, forgiving) forum as The Colbert Report.
With far longer wind than I would no doubt be allotted on Colbert's program, I will attempt to posit my theoretical response to said question. Of course I admit that I am biased as a liberal myself, but I don’t necessarily see this as an attack on conservatism or the Republican Party, it’s just the way I see it as unfolding.
The Republican Party, or the new conservative movement, or what-have-you, seems like the party of absolute truths (i.e. there is one American family, there is one true religion, there is one American dream, and everyone has, for the most part, the same opportunities). There are certainly times when this sort of absolutism is valid and appropriate, but I think more often than not, the story of America cannot be broken down into such black and white terms.
Liberals, on the other hand, deal with the subjective – for instance, “Yes, I have been privileged, and I am lucky to have been. But what if things had been slightly different?” Or alternately, “People in the inner city have not been dealt the same number of cards. Maybe we can break the chain of poverty and violence if we give them a preferential option for jobs and welfare, to make the future brighter for them, and especially their children and grandchildren.” Some might call this sort of shades-of-gray policy wishy-washy or weak spirited, and there are doubtless instances of broken systems or liberal ideology shifting too far into areas of unrealistic humanism and hopeless idealism, but the project is noble: to level the playing field by attempting to put oneself in another’s shoes. (To go further, focus on the environment is arguably a call to put ourselves in the shoes of our descendants, preserving resources and natural beauty for them; abortion-rights advocacy is not support of killing fetuses – to liberals, it is an acknowledgment of compassion to young women put in difficult circumstances with few options.)
Back to the original issue. Musicians, and artists of all kinds, really, and a lot of intellectuals and humanities-type people, make a living dealing in the subjective. And thank goodness; their output would be incredibly boring otherwise. Being able to see from other points of view, whether or not that is the right thing to do or even valid or practical in a certain instance, is what liberals do, and it also happens to be what humanities people and artists do – they go hand-in-hand. Also, artistic types are constantly searching for new ideas, or ways to appropriate old ideas in interesting ways, and this insatiable appetite fuels progressivism, not only in the arts but also in the socio-political realm.
I see the appeal of hard-line stances – “If you commit a crime, you are a criminal; there is no reason that residents of the inner city cannot take responsibility for themselves; Muslim fundamentalists attack U.S. civilians in the name of Allah, so Islam is evil.” So simple, there’s a neat order to them, almost poetic. The realities, however, are infinitely more nuanced.
What led the criminal to commit that crime? Is it fair to punish someone for committing a crime for, say, preserving himself or his family? Is it fair to punish him the same amount as someone who committed the same crime just to be a dick?
How on earth are inner city residents supposed to take responsibility when there are fewer positive role models in their communities, or responsibility has not been consistently stressed as a virtue?
Is it fair to define one fifth of the world in terms of a minority of radical jerks? Is it fair to assume that Middle-Eastern culture operates on Western, post-Enlightenment ideals of personal freedom and separation of religion & secular life/culture, or that it should?
There are no easy answers to these questions, but the very act of giving them a second look is more than many people do. I'm getting worked up now, and I could go on with dozens more examples of how our domestic and global realities are complex and subjective, but such digressions would effectively lose touch with the purpose of this column. That is, artists, musicians, writers, etc., are simply more likely than their non-artistic counterparts to be hard-wired into seeing from another’s point of view, then making them more likely to jive with the social and political sector that is consistent with such mindsets. Not necessarily out of enlightenment, mind you, but because that's what artists do.
(An aside: The irony is that, in today’s fiercely bipartisan political climate, the same movement supposedly based more on intellectualism, empathy, and multiple points-of-view is forced by its very leaders and proponents to shut itself off from the biggest set of other points of view, that of their Republican opponents, therefore squelching any room for compromise or discourse on either side. It is for this reason that I cannot necessarily call Democrats open-minded, however much I would like that to be the case.)
I do not know why Carole King was stumped by this question – it seems so obvious. Maybe she knew that Colbert's character would interrupt her and not let her speak. Maybe she assumed everyone knows the answer, or maybe she got flustered on TV. Regardless, I am sad that she missed the opportunity to once and for all defend the arts and entertainment industries’ liberal leanings against accusations of anti-American hippy non-politics. Although that may be the case for, say, someone like Richard Gere, the reality in total is far more nuanced. There are no absolutes.
March 19, 2008
Colbert is of course playing a conservative-pundit character, and I get the sneaking suspicion that both he (the real-life Stephen Colbert) and King know damn well why musicians are liberal, but still in all, I was perplexed that she did not take advantage of the golden opportunity to explain in it intellectual terms. I have never before seen such a fundamental question leveled at someone capable of answering it in such a wide-reaching (and ultimately, forgiving) forum as The Colbert Report.
With far longer wind than I would no doubt be allotted on Colbert's program, I will attempt to posit my theoretical response to said question. Of course I admit that I am biased as a liberal myself, but I don’t necessarily see this as an attack on conservatism or the Republican Party, it’s just the way I see it as unfolding.
The Republican Party, or the new conservative movement, or what-have-you, seems like the party of absolute truths (i.e. there is one American family, there is one true religion, there is one American dream, and everyone has, for the most part, the same opportunities). There are certainly times when this sort of absolutism is valid and appropriate, but I think more often than not, the story of America cannot be broken down into such black and white terms.
Liberals, on the other hand, deal with the subjective – for instance, “Yes, I have been privileged, and I am lucky to have been. But what if things had been slightly different?” Or alternately, “People in the inner city have not been dealt the same number of cards. Maybe we can break the chain of poverty and violence if we give them a preferential option for jobs and welfare, to make the future brighter for them, and especially their children and grandchildren.” Some might call this sort of shades-of-gray policy wishy-washy or weak spirited, and there are doubtless instances of broken systems or liberal ideology shifting too far into areas of unrealistic humanism and hopeless idealism, but the project is noble: to level the playing field by attempting to put oneself in another’s shoes. (To go further, focus on the environment is arguably a call to put ourselves in the shoes of our descendants, preserving resources and natural beauty for them; abortion-rights advocacy is not support of killing fetuses – to liberals, it is an acknowledgment of compassion to young women put in difficult circumstances with few options.)
Back to the original issue. Musicians, and artists of all kinds, really, and a lot of intellectuals and humanities-type people, make a living dealing in the subjective. And thank goodness; their output would be incredibly boring otherwise. Being able to see from other points of view, whether or not that is the right thing to do or even valid or practical in a certain instance, is what liberals do, and it also happens to be what humanities people and artists do – they go hand-in-hand. Also, artistic types are constantly searching for new ideas, or ways to appropriate old ideas in interesting ways, and this insatiable appetite fuels progressivism, not only in the arts but also in the socio-political realm.
I see the appeal of hard-line stances – “If you commit a crime, you are a criminal; there is no reason that residents of the inner city cannot take responsibility for themselves; Muslim fundamentalists attack U.S. civilians in the name of Allah, so Islam is evil.” So simple, there’s a neat order to them, almost poetic. The realities, however, are infinitely more nuanced.
What led the criminal to commit that crime? Is it fair to punish someone for committing a crime for, say, preserving himself or his family? Is it fair to punish him the same amount as someone who committed the same crime just to be a dick?
How on earth are inner city residents supposed to take responsibility when there are fewer positive role models in their communities, or responsibility has not been consistently stressed as a virtue?
Is it fair to define one fifth of the world in terms of a minority of radical jerks? Is it fair to assume that Middle-Eastern culture operates on Western, post-Enlightenment ideals of personal freedom and separation of religion & secular life/culture, or that it should?
There are no easy answers to these questions, but the very act of giving them a second look is more than many people do. I'm getting worked up now, and I could go on with dozens more examples of how our domestic and global realities are complex and subjective, but such digressions would effectively lose touch with the purpose of this column. That is, artists, musicians, writers, etc., are simply more likely than their non-artistic counterparts to be hard-wired into seeing from another’s point of view, then making them more likely to jive with the social and political sector that is consistent with such mindsets. Not necessarily out of enlightenment, mind you, but because that's what artists do.
(An aside: The irony is that, in today’s fiercely bipartisan political climate, the same movement supposedly based more on intellectualism, empathy, and multiple points-of-view is forced by its very leaders and proponents to shut itself off from the biggest set of other points of view, that of their Republican opponents, therefore squelching any room for compromise or discourse on either side. It is for this reason that I cannot necessarily call Democrats open-minded, however much I would like that to be the case.)
I do not know why Carole King was stumped by this question – it seems so obvious. Maybe she knew that Colbert's character would interrupt her and not let her speak. Maybe she assumed everyone knows the answer, or maybe she got flustered on TV. Regardless, I am sad that she missed the opportunity to once and for all defend the arts and entertainment industries’ liberal leanings against accusations of anti-American hippy non-politics. Although that may be the case for, say, someone like Richard Gere, the reality in total is far more nuanced. There are no absolutes.
March 19, 2008
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