Those Case Logic CD Wallet Blues
The way we listen to music has changed so much over the years. I'm old enough to remember vinyl, owned cassette tapes, and I can't begin to tell you how many CD "books" I had sitting in my first car (a Mazda MX-6 affectionately named Mr. Bojangles).
The first album (cassette tape) I ever owned was Michael Jackson's, “Thriller”. I tried my best to wear that cassette out and it just kept delivering over and over. I bet it still sits somewhere in my parent’s attic at the bottom of a dusty box, along with my mom’s Pointer Sisters and my brother’s LL Cool J.
I think my family single-handedly kept battery companies in business with the number of AA's we bought to supply juice to my Sony Walkman. My brother and I had an extra backpack just to carry everything we needed to play music when the family would go on vacation.
Compact discs seemed so futuristic when they came out. I'd argue it was the start of a new way to listen to songs and albums. No longer did you have to try and guess where the next song started by randomly fast-forwarding your cassette. If I wanted to listen to track 7 of Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" all I had to do was throw the disc in and skip forward. While that convenience was nice, you still had to be committed to listening to most of an album unless you enjoyed switching out CD’s every few minutes - which I never cared to do.
To this day, if I’m listening to a song that was on a CD I owned, I have a pretty good idea what the next song on the album would be. But we listen to music differently now. Slick music apps suggest and recommend songs based on listening preferences, so unless you’re specifically playing from an album, that next track you’re waiting for doesn’t come.
Listening to whole albums isn’t something most people do anymore…at least I don’t think. Our attention spans have shortened, and we’re quick to jump to the next song from a completely different artist. Not that it’s always bad, because boy-oh-boy there were a lot of bad songs on those albums back in the day. But didn’t those bad songs really make you appreciate the good ones?
A quick Google search and I came across the post “20 Albums You Have to Listen to Front to Back”. I like to believe that musicians still write an album to be consumed as a whole. I was happy to see more modern artists on that list than I thought there might be.
I’m guilty of jumping around artists, songs, and genres. But I’m trying to be more deliberate in listening to music from an artist as a whole. A recent Christmas gift from my wife was a record player and a subscription to Tipitina’s Record Club (highly recommended). Nothing makes you commit to an album quite like vinyl. I’ve really enjoyed being “forced” to listen to albums as a whole.
If you’ve ever watched any kind of music documentary, you know just how much work goes into making an album. I figure the least I can do is give a full listen to what they’ve spent months and sometimes years putting together.
I’m curious to know what others have done with their CD collections? I’m late in asking because i can tell you what happened to mine - they went out with the trash, but not without a lot of hesitation. 2900+ songs and over 24 hours of music on CDs just gone after sitting in boxes untouched for years. How do I know it was 2900+ songs? Because my wife and I both sat down over a few nights and added those albums to playlists on Spotify before getting rid of them.
It was quite a reminiscing and informative exercise. A display of just how much my music tastes have changed as I’ve gotten older. And also a look at some of the eclectic mix of music I listened to growing up. From classical to blues to hip hop to death metal, I’ve been all over the place with my music tastes and I can say most were not just one-and-done listens. When you commit to buying a CD for $10-$20, you got your money’s worth whether you liked the album or not.
I did keep about 20 discs because I still have a disc player in my car. They’re stored in one of those Case Logic CD holder books that I’ve had since I was 16-years-old. My commute to work is a little longer now, so when I run out of podcasts to listen to, I could unzip that case and pop something in and give it a listen. I might even listen to the whole album. I hope you will too!