Spun often
Starting with a stance that I've had for while, why do so many people not realize that the words "recording" and "album" are still perfectly valid? It's amazing to hear how often people, usually folks over 40 who remember things like "rock 'n' roll" and "good music"—neither of which people born after 1970 would know anything about—will call a CD a "record" or an "album", only to correct themselves with a chuckle. "Oh, I guess it's not a record. Those don't exist anymore," they'll say, their faces giving away that, inside their heads, they're reminiscing about getting stoned with their friends in the rec room and putting the needle down on their new copy of Led Zeppelin IV.
While I envy getting into that album when it was brand new, I think that what this crude composite of stereotypes said is dead wrong. CDs and mp3s are still music that has been recorded, so it's perfectly accurate to call them "records". A collection of photos is still a photo album, so why isn't a collection of songs, regardless of the format, an "album"? Damn straight it is.
The long and winding point here is this: I was thinking of the term "heavy rotation" about this mp3 that I'm about to lay on you, and that it was a song that I spin often, only to think that "heavy rotation" and "spin" are also outdated. Oh, but are they? ARE THEY?! Am I wrong, or is that hard-drive on your computer spinning and rotating away? Damn straight it is.
Keren Ann, "Chelsea Burns"
A stunning song that reminds me of "200 Miles" by Cowboy Junkies (that's a good thing), this is about as hot as a slow song gets, and definitely an indication of the quality of the album, Nolita. It's fantastic, so buy it. If I was a cheesy reviewer for a small-time paper, I would proclaim Nolita, "hands-down, the sexiest album of the year". But I'm not, so I won't. Instead, I'll just tell you that it's so sexy that you'll want to have sex.
5 comments:
WELL, if you want to be all technical about it - if you play your MP3 on a flash drive (like the new iPod Shuffle - and the format which I think will be the future for MP3 players), then the drive is technically NOT spinning. Of course, I'm sure something is spinning - electrons? photons? something? So maybe it's still okay. My head is now spinning thinking about it, so I guess that's something...
Doug's been hitting the sauce already. It's a normal Saturday morning in Nashville.
that's kind of a stretch. the hard drive serves many other functions other than making the music play. On the other hand, the turntable spins at 33 1/3 or 45, or even 78 rpms with the sole purpose of making the music play.
You could, though, say that an audio cd spins at a rate of between 210-539 rpm with no other purpose than music.
I think my head is spinning.
You're right, too about those old timers. They're erroneously making "vinyl lp" synonymous with "recording album". By definition, an album is nothing more than an organized collection.
I remember having some difficulty explaining to a young WQFS trainee the concept of a cd single. "Why is it called a single?", they wanted to know. "What do you mean by b-side", they wanted to know. I'm not sure what this has to do with your original post, but I'm sure there's some relevance somewhere.
You're all drunk. Totally freaking wasted.
Am I drunk, too? I've been trying to figure that out for days.
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