Hidden Tracks (i)

I often think about how the relative fortunes and career trajectories of musicians of different generations are affected by technology, and when I say this, I'm thinking purely in terms of their paths to "success," whether defined by themselves or someone else. Obviously, technology affects what we create, not just our success or failure in being recognized for it, and that's certainly a fertile area for discussion, but it's also worth pondering whether or not a musician is in the right place at the right time relative to technology, and how that affects, for lack of a better term, their business decisions.

I was born in 1982, started playing music around 1993, and consider myself to have gotten "serious" sometime in 1999. It's often difficult for me to distinguish what has actually changed since then from what I was simply ignorant of, but to my recollection, while record labels still meant something, everybody and their brother was already recording, producing and distributing their own discs back then, and it was obvious that sooner or later, having a CD out would cease to mean anything at all. When exactly that threshold was reached is probably impossible to determine; it probably happened at different times in different places, and may, in truth, have already happened most places by the time I even became aware of it. Suffice it to say, then, that I've always felt just a bit screwed over.

Whether or not that's justified is another story, for I've benefitted in innumerable ways (most importantly as a listener, I think) from the increased accessibility (lower case "a") of recorded music. It's no coincidence that my getting "serious" about music happened exactly when I started spending substantial portions of my time listening to music, but the cruelty of that scenario is that I was allowed to become enraptured with a world that was already dead and gone. Even though I've tried many times to accept that fact and move on, part of me will never forget the feeling of staring at the paltry stack of discs that comprised my collection circa 1999 and looking forward to the day when I could offer the world such a document of my own. Every one of those discs mattered to me, so the idea of making one myself seemed significant. Little did I know it was already too late.

So, my relationship to technology is a bit like the milk commercial where the guy arrives in what appears to be heaven (for those who haven't seen it: besides angels, there are brownies and chocolate chip cookies everywhere, but when he opens the fridge, the milk carton is empty, and he's left wondering where he actually is). Such is life as a musician who came of age during digital distribution's pre-natal stage, seduced by music when physical media still mattered, but unable to move others beyond casual resignation using the same format.

Truthfully, I could have jumped on the train just in the nick of time had I so chosen. There certainly were people my age and younger in 1999 who had discs of their own, and although it may already have meant next to nothing in the "real world," it certainly seemed pretty cool to other young people who didn't know any better. The problem with me was that I did know better. I largely resented these kids, first of all because their rich uncle had obviously bankrolled the project, and second because, though I had quite a ways to go myself, I could hear that their playing (and writing, in some cases) was not worthy of releasing a document.

I didn't want to be like that, and so it was something of a point of pride for me for a long time that I didn't have a disc. I wanted one, but I wanted it to be good, and seeing so many kids my age coming out with junk that they'd obviously be embarrassed about within the decade made me think twice. I'm glad I did, because anything I could have mustered back then would most certainly have had to be pulled of the shelves (err...servers?) in short order. I was quite self-righteous about this choice for a long time; it was the only way to console myself for being left completely in the dust, especially after it became obvious that people were tiling their bathrooms with these things, and that I'd passed on my only fleeting chance to make one that mattered to anyone at all.

The vestiges of that self-righteousness now have me thinking that this is just one of the many cases where I've been punished for doing the right thing. But was it the right thing? I saved myself some cash, and spared the few people who would have heard it the consternation that I felt for so many of their kids' recorded efforts. But in a sense, I was also fiddling while Rome burned. If I had the benefit of hindsight, I might have gone whole hog just to do my best to catch the twilight of the pre-digital age. It's a chance no one will ever have again.

I'm making it sound like I have an enduring fondness for physical media when that's not entirely the case. I've been dragging my feet a bit, but recently opened an iTunes account, and have purchased a few things that way. One thing holding me back is that I acquired more physical media over the last several years than I've been able to listen to, and so there's really no reason for me to start buying MP3's by the dozen (speaking of which, while the pricing is eminently reasonable, it is waaay too easy to spend a shitload of money on iTunes, so that has me being cautious also). The blossoming of digital distribution is just one part of the story: it's also cheaper and easier to record, edit, design and promote a record, and predictably, everyone is doing all of those things in copious amounts, hence saturating the market and people's attention spans along with it. So, I don't mean to get sentimental over the discs themselves; it's the particular conditions of the era they shaped (or perhaps my mistaken notions about it) that are more worth mourning.

Looking on the Bright Side

If the imminent death of physical media means that used record stores will be inundated with CD's and selling them for the same cost as their LP's, sign me up now.

Buying and Listening Habits

In talking to several acquaintances recently, I have learned that most of them have at least one quirk when it comes to their CD buying and/or listening habits that seems very counterintuitive to me.

I know someone who buys lots of CD's and listens to them only a few times. Schoenberg said that to like something one must first be able to remember it; probably too broad of a generalization, but certainly one that I find myself identifying with most of the time. In any case, if you can't remember it at all, how's that any different from never having listened to it in the first place? It's also good to give everything a fair shot; early on especially, I found that things that sounded "weird" at first I often ended up far more attached to in the end than the things I liked right away. This, however, is changing the more experience I gain; nowadays, my early reaction is much more indicative of my eventual "final" judgment.

I know someone who has almost stopped buying recorded music completely. This seems very strange to me. The more you know, the more you don't know, right? New recordings are being made at an alarming rate, and this only adds to an already staggering cumulative body of work that is available. The more music one is exposed to, the more one becomes aware of what one hasn't heard. It starts to appear unmanageable sometimes, but rather than get discouraged, it comes to seem even more imperative that one continue to investigate. Time is running out, you know? I can't imagine living without hope of anything interesting ever materializing again. That would really suck.

I know someone who does not expect a CD to last more than a couple of years. Many concerns have emerged about the durability of CD's. I treat mine poorly, and yet I have had no problems yet that were not due to gross neglect (i.e. major scratches and scuffs). My earliest computer burned CD's have also held up quite well considering that they are supposed to have a much shorter life span than their commercially produced counterparts. I'll be holding my breath as the oldest among my CD collection enter their second decade.

I know someone whose CD collection is heavily weighted towards only a few favorite artists. Conversely, back when I was starting from scratch, I figured that I ought to focus on breadth rather than depth simply because there was so much out there. I figured that I could start to specialize after I got a decent idea of what I was dealing with in the first place. I seem to recall developing this approach based largely on what I was hearing and reading from jazz pedagogy, although come to think of it, I can't place the exact source right now. I seem to think that Aebersold advocates this somewhere, but I'm not sure. Lo and behold, I have stuck to this mindset for almost a decade and the sum total of all recorded music seems more unmanageable than ever. I've also found that, according to acquaintances, this is probably my oddest quirk as a consumer of recorded music; nonetheless, I plan to stick by it for a while to come. The toughest issue is posed by major figures who have reinvented themselves multiple times: Miles Davis, Anthony Braxton, Gyorgy Ligeti, etc. One does not simply pick one CD by one of these artists and call it a representative sample, so essentially, you end up counting music from different periods of the artist's career as if it were made by different people. There's so much out there that you're going to miss some of it no matter what. If nothing else, the creative process demands stimulation (if not downright influence), and I think my approach works well in this way. I also think that there's a certain amount of professional obligation to be aware of what's out there, as well as to stay abreast of new developments (if not as a player or writer, than at least as a teacher).

Finally, check out the comment to here. Critics selling their review copies of CD's before the official release of the album? You'd expect there to be an unwritten rule against this in the profession, but either it doesn't exist at all, or it isn't a sufficient deterrent. I guess chronic exposure to less-than promising releases leads some critics become so cynical about musicians that they have no conscience about this.

What are some of your buying and listening quirks?