Death Of The LP? I Don't Think So Buddy: Pt 2

Further to Mof's piece about being a record freak in the mp3 age, heres an illustrative anecdote from...The Files Of Fuzz Squad.

So I'm at work the other week lookin' to do pretty much anything but get down to the J O B, and I spies this kid, studenty type, looks like he plays bass in Gomez, probably a Mogwai fan, that sort of vibe, he's in the office for the week doing some sorta temp work, I forget exactly what. I'm bored outta my skull anyways so figure'll I'll wander over to his desk and make with the nice. As I approach, The Kid's fishing a CD out of his bag. This is a crucial moment in our relationship. If he pulls out The Hoosiers or Foals I'm all set to turn the hell around and never look back. But if he pulls out The Immaculate Collection, Enter The 36 Chambers Or Bitches Brew, I know things are gonna be just rosy between us...

So what's it gonna be, son? Show us your hand...I'm momentarily stunned - The Kid couldn't have played it any better. Out of the rucksack comes an Augustus Pablo CD, and not just any Augustus Pablo CD, but the very same cheap-ass Best Of Augustus Pablo CD that I own, The Great Pablo on Music Club, with One Of My All Time Fave Records, the melodicatastic dub classic 'East Of The River Nile' at the beginning. Perfect.

I sit myself down beside The Kid and we strike up a conversation 'bout somethin' or other and soon enough, as is so often the way, talk turns to dub reggae, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, King Tubby, Errol Thompson etc etc etc, we both dig East Of The River Nile the mostest, turns out The Kids' some sorta dub nut, really knows his stuff, at least as far as I can tell, not being any kinda expert on the subject myself. I'm pretty much bored of talking about music with most people mosta the time, The Beatles and old Hip-Hop not withstanding, and it's nice to be rapping with somebody who doesn't wanna talk about (a) canonised rock music  (b) American Roots Music (c) Contemporary Alt / Indie Rock.

Following the steps of the record nerd tango, The Kid then asks me what I'm into. I guess he's genuinely interested but the fact he's practically obliged to ask me makes it kind of a drag. This is the point in these conversations where I start shifting in my seat and looking for the door or a window I can escape through. There's really nothing duller than listing all the stupid bands I like: "Oh, uh, all sorts really, uh, The Shangri Las...uh...old Stax stuff...The Velvet Underground...prog...old hip-hop, like, Big Daddy Kane sorta stuff...uh..." I just hate it. Gamely struggling to bring some momentum back to the conversation, The Kid mentions that he ain't ever really listened to much old 60s rock stuff but that someone recently  recommended he try Frank Zappa...

...and, taking their advice, had just "downloaded the entire pre-90s Zappa back catalogue." WHAT?! My mind begins to race. Downloaded? He DOWNLOADED THEM? He hasn't bought any of them? On vinyl? On CD? I mean, what must Freak Out or Weasels Ripped My Flesh cost on CD thesedays? A fiver? You can stretch to that, can't you, Kid...I try to fight my snobbery, but my heads swimming. Breathe, Paul. Remember what you learnt in therapy. He's a good Kid. Lots of people use mp3s these days. Maybe the situation isn't as bad as it seems...maybe he normally buys stuff but just downloaded the Zappa back cat in some moment of madn...

The Kid: Nah dude. I can't remember the last time I properly bought anything. I borrowed this Augustus Pablo CD off my Dad. I've probably got, like, 20 CDS, but I've got hundreds and hundreds of albums. On mp3.

Me: Oh...uh...that's...uh...cool...I guess....

The Kid: Yeah, like, I'd never heard any Zappa stuff at all, now I own, like 50 albums. Just left 'em downloading all night.

Me: Right....

The Kid: I really like that track Willie The Pimp, that's a mint tune.

I grab at this nugget of Mojo Magazine pop music orthodoxy like a drowning man clinging to a piece of drift wood.

Me: Oh, yeah...Beefheart's on that, right?

The Kid: What?

Me: Captain Beefheart. He's singing on it.

The Kid: Oh, really? I dunno about that.

Me: Yeah, it's the only vocal on Hot Rats, the rest is instrumental, I think.

The Kid: 'Hot' what?

Me: Hot Rats? The album Willie The Pimp is on? Pinkish photo on the front?

The Kid: Oh, really? I don't know the titles or what it looks like or anything

I don't know the titles or what it looks like or anything. This is where me and The Kid pretty much parted ways. He had to 'input some data'. I had to 'make some calls' and 'photocopy some stuff.' We'd run into each other now and again of course, make small talk, maybe he'd mention Augustus Pablo in an attempt to recapture some of the magic of that dub reggae conversation, but it wasn't the same, and we both knew it. I just couldn't get past the mp3 thing. This is my issue. My problem.

....so what are my problems? Well, first of all, The Kid doesn't 'own' those Zappa albums. Owning those LPs requires you to actually own them. He 'owns' them even less than if somebody had taped them for him. The Kid can say "I've HEARD Hot Rats", but he can't honestly say that he 'has' Hot Rats. Secondly, ain't no way he's ever going to actually buy, y'know, spend money on, a Frank Zappa LP now. And I'm sorry, that kinda stinks. It devalues the whole thing. "Oh, yeah, Hot Rats, great album, really top drawer stuff...would I PAY for it? Would I actually WALK into HMV and spend FIVE POUNDS ON IT? Christ no!" And thirdly, and this is personally my biggest problem, downloading a bunch of files removes all context from the music. How can you hope to enjoy the work of an artist properly when you have removed their work from all context? Sure, Willie The Pimp is a great song in its own right. But wouldn't it be nice to know when it was recorded? Who played on it? What album it was on? Where that album falls in the Zappa discography? Who Frank Zappa was? What that album looks like? WHAT AN ALBUM LOOKS LIKE????!! Paul Fuzz

Comments

[AnnaWaits]

Really cool post this. I totally know what you're talking about. At uni I always felt a bit inadequate around people who had like 20,000 albums on their computer... then you realise they just downloaded every single 'Now' compilation or something. They actually own about five CDs. It's not a snobby thing, it's just a difference between liking songs and caring about music.

[Marie Phillips]

I dunno - I download a lot, but I always pay for it. Mainly I like downloading because it's easier to browse online, as I can listen to the whole album - I've been burned too many times by the good-single-bad-album scenario. Also, as I only ever listen to music via my iPod (whether on headphones or on speakers) it does cut out a huge amount of plastic waste. And this way I don't get patronised by teenage boys in record stores either. Not much of a defense I know - but then again, I don't own any of the Frank Zappa back catalogue so maybe I'm already beyond redemption...

[Dean]

There's a weird technical thing going on here, as I remember back in the days of Napster if someone recommended a certain band to me I'd go download one or two tracks there to sample them (whichever track was the most popular was generally a good starting point). If I liked it I'd buy the album. Of course the regulators pounced, as they're want to do, and Napster and many services like it were shut down. The ones that weren't were quickly rendered useless by being infested with hundreds of viruses and fake files.
Fast forward to today. The new 'in' method of file-sharing is a system called Bittorrent, a wholey decentralised system that's a lot harder to shut down. Bittorrent has a certain quirk though. It's far, far better for sharing large files than smaller ones. I won't bore you with the technical and cultural details why, but the upshot is there's few things shared smaller than 50mb, and never a 3mb individual MP3.

So what exactly is my point? If someone suggests I check out a band now and I search for them on Bittorrent, chances are the file with the most sharers will be the one with the entire back catalogue. Because it's thr biggest file. So to 'sample' this band I end up with everything they've ever produced. And when I have all the tracks already it feels a lot more like buying the CDs is actually wasting money.

These days I have some success in sampling bands via YouTube but even that is getting clamped down on (and you have to dodge all the live mobile phone gig recordings with shit sound). But for anyone vaguely computer literate it's far easier to grab a big collection of an artist's work than it is to get one or two sample tracks. Just another example of the industry eating itself.

[Rullsenberg]

I'm all for the Real Thing. Vinyl, CD, heck I'll even give some kudos to the old cassette (Pillows and Prayers, pay no more than 99p). Recently my much loved friend George was espousing how he was more interested in the content than the Object. Me, I like to FEEL the damn thing in my hands, see artwork, read lyrics, essays, look at the details on the track listing, performers, the thanks, the catalogue numbers even... Then promptly we went to Selectadisc and he picked up a CD just cos he liked the physical feel of it. I was merciless to him. Hee. To give due, he DOES care about all the things associated with the object, and buys regularly. But he does a lot of downloading (paid for, via those good old below rate Russians) and i'm afraid I will always be the other way about.

Objects rule!

[David Walker]

Vinyl for me when it comes to vintage tunes, it's the way they were intended to sound and the way they were intended to look.

Downloads? Well, there's nothing wrong in this day and age with buying music downloads. Yes, that's buying downloads. But it does make music more disposable and you feel less like you own something, more like you're borrowing it from the record company's library. All depends on how you interact with it.

Mind you - I think DJs who use laptops and iPods should be fined heavily and stopped from ever entering a club again.

[PaulFuzz]

Thankyou all for taking the time etc etc...the story in my post is, like, 90% true. What I really thought when The Kid laid his downloading jive on me was: "hmm. That is a way of listening to pop music *fundementally* different to the way I listen to pop music. He has placed precisely ZERO value on many things about pop music I value very highly; supporting indie record stores, owning an item with some history, the thrill of getting a good record at a good price, artwork, liner notes....all of these things are removed, and replaced with...convenience, I guess. That doesn't seem like a great deal."

Mr Walker: yeah, the DJing thing plays a part here. I DJ quite alot, and would feel a complete fraud DJing off mp3.

[Dean]

It's really weird that the one area where vinyl has stayed alive is in the Dance/DJ/Club market. Weird because that's the genre of music that involves the most computer-based post-production.

DJing off MP3 is bad though, but that's purely down to the fact that when you're feeding it through a club amp and playing at crazy volumes you start to spot the flaws in the recording.

While I see the arguement for vinyl I think as a scientist and a geek, I have trouble assigning an inherant value to a CD over a computer file as I know exactly how the music is stored on that CD and it's just data like any other file. I still buy CDs as I like having them on the shelf, but they get ripped right into iTunes and played from the computer and iPod. But other than the increase in fidelity, the content of the music for me (packaging aside) is the same.

[Paul Fuzz]

Dean: The CD / mp3 debate is certainly muddier than the mp3 / vinyl debate...it's all shades of grey afterall, and of course there is nothing intrinsically 'better' about a CD, but the sheer physicality of a CD and the potential for artwork, liner notes etc makes it a format I personally value more... Even more than CDs I value C90 tapes, because at least there is some genuine cultural interest / value there (hip-hop mixtape culture, compilation tape culture etc), which there really isn't with CDS. I flat-out prefer how records sound, I guess largely because I tend to listen to and DJ music (from 50s to 80s stuff) desinged to be played on vinyl anyway...and of course records are produced using 'technology' just as much as anything else, it's not like these things are hand made.

The interesting thing about this debate is that there are no absolutes to it; I mean, if somebody downloads a great Radio 4 podcast for free there's no argument to be had there, 'cos you cannot get that recording on any other format. Or say you download a great track from a new band's myspace for free 'cos they've not released it on any other format, and actually WANT you to download it for free, again, there;s obviously bo debate there. So some free downloads are 'bad' and some are 'ok'? And what about vinyl bootlegs with shoddy artwork and shit sound? Plenty of those around. It just goes on and on.