Plenty has been written about how iTunes/myspace/YouTube/[insert file-sharing app] has changed music-buying (or lack thereof) habits, and how the music industry has struggled to adapt to changes in consumers’ listening/buying/sharing/downloading habits, etc. Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I personally now go about engaging and sharing music, particularly in comparison to how I was first introduced to the great records of my youth. To summarize, I now purchase and download music from iTunes and occasionally buy a used CD (but only if it’s cheaper than the $9.99 iTunes price!), whereas I first encountered the songs of, for instance, Motown, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, and the Beatles by hanging out with my dad as a little kid while he spinned one classic record after another. Looking back, I now realize how cool and special an experience that was. And it wasn’t just about listening to the records; it was also about handling and flipping each record, dropping the needle, and studying the covers and reading the liner notes, and it was all a very tangible, almost ritualistic experience . Now that I’m a dad I think about how I’m going to share music with my boy. Will I dial up some mp3s on my laptop? Don’t be silly. Will I burn some tracks for him onto a CD-R? Of course not. What’s more likely, assuming I don’t show up on Uncle Abe’s doorstep asking to borrow The White Album on vinyl (and Abe, I’m starting to come around), is that my kid will show me how he’d like to engage music; chances are, it will take the form of dad jamming his boy’s cute little ass off on Rock Band (or some other video game), which is a type of pleasure our folks obviously couldn’t share with us. I’m not sure which type of experience is better—sharing a record or exchanging licks via Rock Band—but as a dad, and a good consumer, I want both options. I want every option. And for that reason, my final entry for my 2009 year-in-review playlist is “The Beatles Rock Band.” For a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse on the making-of, see this article from The New York Times Magazine.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Trigger's Year in Review
Well, Kevin and Abe have already put together two excellent “best of”/”favorites” lists for 2009, both of which have made my end-of-the-year albums-to-buy list longer than it already was (this is always the time of the year where I go pretty hog-nutty on buying new music, given the proliferation of best-of recommendations and whatnot), so I decided to take a slightly different approach and put together a half-assed year-in-review playlist, something that attempts to capture the pop-cultural spirit of 2009. And any playlist with such a focus wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging that the world breathed one giant collective sigh of relief when news broke that the King of Pop had kicked the bucket. (Sorry, MJ fans.) For 40-odd years, the world couldn’t take their eyes off Michael Jackson, first because he was a super superstar, a child prodigy who channeled Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, James Brown, a young man who developed a mystique, sound, choreography, etc., that took pop music and dance to never-before-reached heights, and then because of the complete and utter trainwreck his life—and face—had become. In the first 20 years of his career, the world looked on because, yes, we were thrilled and we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. In the latter 20 years, the world looked on because we couldn’t look away, as much as we wanted to. On that note, let’s raise our guarded glasses. Here’s one of my MJ faves, ”Rock With You.” Rest in peace, Michael.
Fortunately for us, though, at the tail end of 2009, Tiger Woods entered the fray to take a lot of the heat off MJ, especially as news of MJ’s tendencies to remove his nose and to pee in a glass in front of his guests really started to capture the public’s imagination. Balloon Boy & Family and the Salahis made valiant efforts at garnering the spotlight, but eventually they were exposed for simply being pathetic attempts at shameless self-promotion. What we really needed was a good old-fashioned fall-from-grace story, one in which a lilly-white-clean world-class athlete and cultural icon is exposed for being nothing more than a cliche—a philandering horn-dog, PED-pumping, control freak—and Tiger delivered big time. To wit, the surprisingly catchy Tiger Woods Slow Jam is a must for any 2009 Year in Review playlist.
And isn’t that what 2009 is all about? We knew that mainstream news channels are to journalism as to what professional wrestling is to sports, but it seemed like news coverage treaded new, shaky ground this year in that tabloids, internet gossip sites, and the TMZs of the world were suddenly being treated like credible sources. Established public figures spent and are spending an incredible amount of resources and energy to protect their image and privacy, while every where we look there’s a new wanna-be reality star fabricating some outlandish stunt to attract attention. For what it’s worth, there’s no better artist and no better song that puts these sentiments to music than 2009 newcomer Lady Gaga and her single “Paparazzi.” (If you get a chance, check out this NPR story on Lady Gaga. Pretty interesting…)
Perhaps 2009 will be remembered as the Year of Exposure or, maybe, the Year of Being Exposed. As this recent article in the Washington Post points out, in an effort to stand beneath their own little piece of the spotlight, more and more indie bands are attempting to stand apart from the fracas of the Internet, the preponderance of bands on every corner of Brooklyn, and the white noise of mainstream media by simply doing what comes naturally: getting naked. As a parent, I’m not sure how I feel about my son eventually stumbling across a vidcap of Wayne Coyne’s rockwurst (which by the way is exposed at 4:54 of the this video [Nice penis, Wayne]), but I guess there are worse things he could discover on the ‘net. Here’s a suitable-for-viewing-at-work version of Matt and Kim’s “Lessons Learned.”
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