A couple of weeks ago I attempted to help a friend work through his difficulty with buying individual songs vs full albums. In this digital age he has struggled with buying only the tracks he thinks he’s going to like off iTunes or eMusic. I told him it’s all right, that he should buy what he wants to listen to, save space on his hard drive for more of the good stuff. But he holds deep, sincere feelings that doing so does not respect integrity of artist’s work. He’s as true a believer in the album format as any rock nerd I’ve ever encountered.
“I’ve got to buy the whole album and listen to the whole album in the sequence the artist intended,” he told me. “I want to respect the integrity of the artist’s work.”
“When you go to an artist’s exhibit,” he continued, “do you walk into a room and immediately skip half the paintings?”
“I look at them all in some order, as they’re presented,” I said, “but I don’t spend 3 minutes and 30 seconds on each painting. I first glance at them, the way I listen to the 30-second sample of each song on an album I’m checking out on eMusic.”
“How do you know a song’s not going to get better after the 30-second clip you hear?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I replied, “but there are certain devices that usually suggest I’m not going to like a song, like a long, slow, finger-picked minor chord intro.”
My friend was incredulous. “When you buy a new album do you skip right to Track 3, or do you listen to the entire album?”
“The first time through I listen to the entire album, but the second and third time I listen I may start lifting the needle over the songs with long, slow, finger-picked minor chord intros. Life’s too short for that shit!” Then I assured him that I eventually give these songs another chance and sometimes learn that I do like one of them.
This went back and forth until I learned a key detail in my friend’s Rock Nerd Profile: my friend had never bought a single (ie, a 7-inch, 45 RPM slab of vinyl), not even as a little kid. Now it all made sense.
I was compelled to restart our debate, which was now growing quite heated. Continue reading »
