Which do you prefer? Your Ipod or writable CD's? It's a joke question at face value, of course; yes, fumbling with easily abrased discs while weaving inadvertently between lanes just to play a song that doesn't even turn out to be on the damned CD in the first place - way better than all the music you've ever liked organized within a wafer sized hard-drive. Also, it's preferable that music skip when a car goes over bumps.
But then, I've never had all the music I've ever liked on my Ipod. Not ever. Even when I've got loads, I'm still missing loads more. This might be different for you, if you're big on bands and albums and consume your music in an organized, deliberate manner, but I've never had it that way. For one thing, I tend to like songs, and rarely have I acquired them by way of an album or artist. These things are just the liner notes to the tune - the credits. I tend to walk out during the credits.
And so whole collections of music that are favorites at one time become complete obscurities in another. For instance: I had forgotten right up until about noon today that I love the song "Dancing on The Ceiling" by Lionel Richey. Luckily I had burned it to a CD a year or so back, and it found its way into the visor sleeve in our Oldsmobile. The sleeve is kind of a relic, as Abbi insists I drive our new car while she drive the old one, and she has fully embraced the functionality of her Iphone at this point. Our visor sleeve is where our CD's go to die. But I had no music, using the car today, so I ressurected a few. I found the tune entirely on accident.
But then, I've never had all the music I've ever liked on my Ipod. Not ever. Even when I've got loads, I'm still missing loads more. This might be different for you, if you're big on bands and albums and consume your music in an organized, deliberate manner, but I've never had it that way. For one thing, I tend to like songs, and rarely have I acquired them by way of an album or artist. These things are just the liner notes to the tune - the credits. I tend to walk out during the credits.
And so whole collections of music that are favorites at one time become complete obscurities in another. For instance: I had forgotten right up until about noon today that I love the song "Dancing on The Ceiling" by Lionel Richey. Luckily I had burned it to a CD a year or so back, and it found its way into the visor sleeve in our Oldsmobile. The sleeve is kind of a relic, as Abbi insists I drive our new car while she drive the old one, and she has fully embraced the functionality of her Iphone at this point. Our visor sleeve is where our CD's go to die. But I had no music, using the car today, so I ressurected a few. I found the tune entirely on accident.
An Ipod is great, but it has no memory (heh). If your computer dies, you could possibly trick it into accepting your Ipod library back, and continuing. You could, of course, back up your files. You can maintain an mp3 library, but it is still an insubstantial thing. It can be ammended quicker and easier - things can be lost silently and forever. CD's remain, (scratched as they may become). Not only as carriers of music, but documentations of preference - desperation even.
I've burned hundreds and hundreds of CD's. Some are towering works of composition, spanning decades and genres and areas of interest and meaning - packed to the disc's capacity as though I might have been creating the one CD I'd use to sustain me in the event of total musical poverty. Others are two, sometimes one track - the CD I made 3 minutes before the bus came with that one tune I HAD to have on the bus. Most of them are rubbish now - scratched beyond readability, the foil pealed away, trashed - but some endure, clinging desperately to the memory of that one song that meant the world for all of 3 days. A song I might never think of again if I don't one day stumble across the disc and pop it in.
I've burned hundreds and hundreds of CD's. Some are towering works of composition, spanning decades and genres and areas of interest and meaning - packed to the disc's capacity as though I might have been creating the one CD I'd use to sustain me in the event of total musical poverty. Others are two, sometimes one track - the CD I made 3 minutes before the bus came with that one tune I HAD to have on the bus. Most of them are rubbish now - scratched beyond readability, the foil pealed away, trashed - but some endure, clinging desperately to the memory of that one song that meant the world for all of 3 days. A song I might never think of again if I don't one day stumble across the disc and pop it in.
I shutter to think of the friends I've left behind.
By Dave Beauchene
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