An Ode to Compact Discs

Just a few weeks after I touted the benefits of owning physical LPs, author and journalist Rob Sheffield writes in Rolling Stone this week about the resurgence of one of the most assailed forms of music media: the compact disc. The redheaded stepchild of music formats, Neil Young has equated listening to digitized music to sensory deprivation and torture. Ouch!

But while I’ve never understood store-bought cassettes, even back in their hey-day and especially today as they make a perplexing comeback in used record stores, I totally get why CDs are still a thing, Neil Young’s assertions aside. As Sheffield writes: “Compact discs were never about romance — they were about function.”

I and most other music connoisseurs spent years in the 2000s converting their CDs to easily stored MP3 files for use in iPods and the like, but unlike many, I stopped short of actually removing the physical products from my home. Thank goodness, because I really do like having physical CDs to play, especially when I’m driving in my Mazda, which will unfortunately likely be the last car I’ll ever own that’s equipped with a CD player. I still own the 400 or so that I amassed over the years, including my first purchases from 1986, and I still kick myself for having sold or gotten rid of around fifty CDs back in the 2000s. There’s still something alluring about playing a CD in its entirety, uninterrupted. In terms of functionality coupled with pretty damn-good quality, CDs can’t be beat.

Unless you consider streaming, which – let’s face it – wins in the functionality department and can sound pretty great if you want it to, but Sheffield echoes (and states more eloquently) some of the same arguments I made last week about streaming. He writes:

“…streaming is not a ‘place,’ but a barrage of constant options that many fans find less optimal when you’re in the mood to actually concentrate and listen. You’re probably also streaming on a device that’s nagging you about messages you need to answer right now.”

It’s the same premise that people have made all along: that there may simply be something very human about the need for tactile interaction with one’s environment, and in a culture that’s downgraded music and other media to something disposable, it’s natural that the pendulum would slowly shift toward owning physical products. CDs aren’t perfect, but they at least include liner notes and cover art. As if that’s not enough enticement, I saw scores of them at a used furniture sale last week for 25 cents apiece!

And for all you vinyl purists who lean toward environmental causes, Sheffield notes that for all the hubbub people threw at record companies for housing CDs in grotesque longboxes back in the 80s and 90s, “…the tables have turned – now if you buy an LP online, it’s shipped in a package that’s basically six longboxes.” 

Well played.

For those who aren’t familiar with Sheffield, he’s a hell of a writer, and among music geeks is revered alongside other venerated music-themed artists such as author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) and filmmaker John Carney (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street). Sheffield resonates to a certain type of person: often male, semi music-obsessed, a bit insecure, and one who occasionally likes to bathe luxuriously in his own heartache. His books Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls about Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes are mainstays for many music nerds. I highly recommend each of them.

Is Collecting Vinyl Pretentious?

Last week Katie Edwards of the Independent had a little fun with a provocative essay on how pointless ownings records is. She writes from the viewpoint of a fed-up wife whose vinyl-collecting husband has taken over a third of her dining room. To which I say, “Hey, at least it’s not half.”

But seriously, I think Edwards was writing partly for the thrill of poking the bear, knowing that geeky audiophiles would blow a gasket, because midway through her essay she actually answers her own question of why people purchase vinyl. She writes, “Perhaps it’s the experience of vinyl that’s the clincher? The same way I like to hold a physical copy of a book and turn actual pages rather than read an electronic version.”

I can’t speak for all vinyl collectors, but for me, that’s it, exactly. I’ve never bought into the claim that vinyl sounds better than other formats. I’ve also never owned records that I’m reluctant to play – as Edwards’s husband apparently is – for fear that they’ll get damaged. And I don’t eschew streaming music; according to Spotify, I streamed over 139 hours of music in 2021, 55% more than the average Spotify listener.

But streaming doesn’t just make music portable, it also makes it disposable. I’ve invested nothing into downloading the latest Sammy Rae EP (but you should do so – she’s amazing!). Not money. Not time. Not changing the dial on the radio. Worse, I don’t know who plays on her album, who produced it, where it was recorded or who wrote the songs. Her songs exist in the ether, as if they just appeared one day through no effort of gifted musicians. Vinyl and other physical formats force the listener to reckon with the music, to establish a relationship with it, and to devote physical space to it.

Katie Edwards concedes all of this, but then wonders if the real reason people buy vinyl is to flaunt their tastes over those whose musical knowledge they consider pedestrian. Edwards writes, “Having a showy collection of vinyl – that owners have to pull out and parade in front of uninterested guests stifling yawns – is a display of pretentiousness that turns me right off.”  She also writes, “ I just can’t be bothered with the inevitable scoffing by self-described music buffs who consider themselves authorities on taste just because they’ve got a couple of obscure LPs.”

Okay, I cry bullshit here. If she actually has friends who’ve scoffed at her musical tastes, then she needs to find new friends. More likely, I think Edwards is writing to provocate (as she apparently did me!). Either that or she’s projecting her own insecurities on her music-loving friends, the same way any insecure person might do to describe any other human endeavor.

For example, I have a friend who has a very impressive wine cellar in his basement and likes to present good bottles of wine for gatherings. I don’t really know anything about wine except that I like to drink it. Now, I could be intimidated by this and accuse my friend of arrogance, but really – I just think it’s cool. He’s into something I’m not into. I have no aspirations of becoming a wine aficionado, but I’m glad he is, and I’m happy to ask a few questions so that he can share his enthusiasm with me. The next time he comes over to my house, I will have no problems opening up a $12 bottle of cabernet. I don’t think he’ll judge me for it. I think he’ll ask for a glass.

Similarly, Edwards should have no problem streaming the Heart song “Alone” for her friends, as she claims she’s reluctant to do. If they truly look down on her as a result, then shame on them.

But methinks she doth protest too much. She must know that “Alone” blows.

Ha, I actually like that song. Two can play this provocation game!

When Stuff No Longer Matters

A classic scene from 1999’s Best Picture, American Beauty:  Kevin Spacey makes a move on wife Annette Bening in the living room, and for a moment it appears that the two will rekindle what’s long been lost.  Annette’s character notices the beer in her husband’s hand.

A:            You’re going to spill beer on the couch.

K:            So what?  It’s just a couch.

A:            This is a four thousand dollar sofa, upholstered in Italian silk.  This is not just a couch.

K:            It’s...just...a...couch!  This isn’t life!  This is just stuff.   

I love that scene, and not just for the entertainment value; it beautifully captures what’s wrong with many people’s lives.  How many of us have become possessed by our possessions? 

Lately, I’ve pondered where our desire for “stuff” comes from, because after a decade of watching my kids accumulate books, Legos, jewelry and stuffed animals, it’s become apparent that collecting things begins early on.  Even for the very young, something about possession – of calling an object one’s own – is appealing, so that it’s not enough to just see a pretty rock on the Lake Michigan shore; the rock must be picked up and added to a collection of other rocks.  Whether this is a completely natural instinct or the product of a consumer society is open to debate, I suppose, but as a child, I possessed many things, and most of them cost nothing: rocks, pinecones, aluminum, pennies, beer cans, a bad attitude and shot-gun shells. 

(That last one is a bit perplexing.  Why my parents allowed me to wander unsupervised in the woods behind our home where people apparently shot loaded weapons is just one more in a long line of unanswerable questions about my youth.)

When we become adults, most of our childhood collections are discarded or stowed away in boxes, but we manage to fill the void with other kinds of collections.  When my wife and I moved into a bigger house in 2000, we had to fill it with something, and although we didn’t call our new purchases “collections,” they served the same function.  Instead of scanning the earth for rocks and pine cones, I scanned store shelves for paintings and frames, accents and knickknacks, not to mention storage bins for the collections of our children.  And unlike the treasures of my youth, these new acquisitions cost money.

Well into my forties now, the idea of accumulating more “stuff” is not only unappealing, it’s terrifying. What I used to consider important – my CD collection, for instance – I now view as little more than a nuisance.  I’m trying to stick to a new rule: if something comes into my house, something must leave my house.  It may lead to more yard sales, but it should also lead to less clutter and less stress.  And maybe it’ll even help me to avoid that impulse buy.

I recently read the following quote by Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut about growing older and how our views on possessions change over time. 

Several years ago, we sold our home and disposed of many things, including significant parts of our library.  Surprisingly, disposing of our cherished acquisitions collected during three and a half decades stirred not an ounce of regret.  After all, books are only things that join the grand parade of desire/ acquisition/ possession/ discard...having grown old, we stop acquiring things and instead acquire a growing indifference to them.

I wonder if we all grew indifferent a little earlier, if we might be better off.