Friday, March 25, 2011
Page 15
AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)
Music Goes Full Circle
By J’AMY PACHECO
Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.
—Paul Simon
I like music.
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of playing albums on a temperamental blue suitcase record player in my pink-and-green ballerina-themed bedroom. Among my favorites was a set of Disney albums that my parents got for free by filling their car tanks with gas at the local Gulf Station. (With gas prices as high as they are today, I’d feel a lot better about my total at the pump if I could drive away from the station with a “free” album of Walt Disney’s Happiest or Merriest songs. But that’s another story.)
In those days, we could cut 45 rpm records out of the back of a cereal box and play those, too. I remember first hearing The Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” that way.
My sister joined one of those records-by-mail clubs, introducing us to The Grass Roots, Steppenwolf, Mama Cass and Three Dog Night. She had to quit when my parents had to pay for the future selections to which she was obligated, but we got some good music out of it.
By the time I was old enough to start buying my own music, 8-tracks were all the rage. My father had an extensive collection of them, and I loved sitting next to him in the front seat of the car while he sang along. I didn’t even mind when the music would suddenly fade out mid-song for a track change. Quality-wise, the 8-track was a questionable idea, but at least you could take your own music in the car.
When I bought my first brand-new car, it came with an 8-track player. I, too, joined the music-by-mail club, and collected a significant number of 8-tracks – just as the industry shifted to cassettes. Eventually, I ended up with tons of those, which were ultimately replaced by compact discs.
The day we bought our first CD player, I went to a record store (remember those?) and bought a wide variety of CDs to try out. Classic and contemporary rock, Broadway soundtracks, instrumentals – one representing each genre of music. My husband and I stayed up into the week hours of the morning listening and marveling at the quality.
In my home office, I have a rather tall rack that holds my CD collection. It’s fairly eclectic, ranging from The Platters and Frank Sinatra to music of Hawaii, Ireland, Cuba and Roy Rogers. With a five-CD changer and a remote, I’ve been able to change my office’s musical ambiance without even having to get up.
I was, therefore, pretty unhappy when my CD player dropped dead last weekend. It wasn’t even very old. But it stopped emitting sound from four of its five speakers, then started to smell like burning plastic. My husband opened it up and made the sad pronouncement of its passing, then headed out in the rain to buy his unhappy wife a new CD player.
Ha.
He visited electronics stores, discount stores and warehouse stores only to learn that the multiple CD changer is a thing of the past. If you want music, you have to have an iPod, he discovered.
Now, I have access to an iPod. Several, in fact. We gave my daughter a Shuffle, only to discover it was wholly inadequate for a young girl’s musical needs. It was replaced by a Nano, which gave way to an iPod Touch when the well-used Nano lost its ability to store playlists.
But the thought of having to convert all those CDs to digital format is overwhelming. I just want to spontaneously pop in a CD of the Indigo Girls or Anne Murray, not convert all of my music to the latest and greatest format.
I can find multiple CD changers online, but all of them require other components. The days of dropping by WalMart to pick up a single unit that will play multiple CDs, cassettes and even the radio are, apparently, gone the way of the 8-track player.
If, as Paul Simon says, music should grow and mature with you, perhaps the music player should as well. I acknowledge that the change from 8-track to cassette to compact disc was good. But I’m not happy about this latest development.
So for now, I’m listening to music CDs in the DVD drive attached to my computer. The sound is so poor that I feel like I’m listening to my old blue suitcase record player.
If I put some ballerinas up on the walls, I’ll be right back where I started. Who says you can’t go home again?
Copyright 2011, Metropolitan News Company