James llewellyn
Hi, im james. nice of you to pop round. don't get many visitors . i don't really write much. never have. always avoided words. never really got on. but thought i'd give them another chance. recently repeatedly found myself talking to myself, or listening to myself, which ever way you want to look at it. So thought this might help. i mostly spell things wrong and talk about music.
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Here’s a little song i wrote..
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Bury Me In Analogue
A lecturer of mine a couple of years ago, when we were talking about differences in music quality and formats, said to me “I bet you’re one of those strange people that prefer vinyl”. And he was right, I am. But what surprised me was, he wasn’t. Being a music lover and of a generation that will have grown up with vinyl, I thought he must at least have some nostalgia for the format, but no. Music to him is about quality, and not providing the highest quality, vinyl was obsolete.
This view reminded me of an article I’d read when Kindles were first being brought out. The author stated that they would never take off, because their creators had over looked one thing. People who love books, love books. And the only reason music was so successfully transported into the digital realm was because people, who love music, have never fallen for a format. They are concerned with the content and not the medium.
Perhaps this is true, for the majority of people and the majority of formats. But I think music lovers have fallen for a format.
To me CD’s have always just been a vessel, something to hold music while I walk from the record shop, to my computer. Then when the content has been extracted, they are banished to a dusty pile in the corner and forgotten. Mp3’s although convenient, I’m always very aware that they don’t exist in anything but the digital world, and because of that I’ve never felt any attachment to the format. I once had a brief fling with mini-disk, but It was never anything serious, and we both knew it wasn’t going to last. But vinyl…there has always been something special about vinyl.
Some people argue that when music is played on vinyl, it is at its best possible quality. I don’t think this at all. I hear the crackles, the clicks, the pops and the distortion of the needle as it travels around the grooves collecting more dust. But I don’t think the record is the worse for this. To me vinyl is recorded sound in its purest form, because it’s when it’s at its most fragile, most definite and most tangible. What you hold in your hands isn’t a receptacle, which music can be removed from at the first opportunity, it is the music, and in a way the history of that music.
I think that’s an important factor for me, history. The vast majority of my vinyl is inherited, and I find something in knowing that I’m just the latest in a chain of people that have looked after and enjoyed a record, and that I will to in the future continue this chain myself. Each scratch, each click, and each pop to me is a part of this history.
Vinyl presents an album in the same way as I’ve always thought of them, a solid entity. Not carved up into chunks, that can be skipped, repeated, or shuffled. Just played, and loved, the way it’s meant to, from start to finish. I know, you have to turn it over halfway through, but that never bothered me, its all-just part of the ritual. Vinyl is something that can’t be ignored, can’t be stuck on it the background while you do something else, it demands your attention like no other musical format. And I think it deserves it. I’ve always thought that any decent album should sound like one continuous piece, with the occasional pause for breath. Vinyl allows an album like this, not just to be a treasured piece of music, but also a treasured possession.
Vinyl has always been one of the preferred musical formats amongst musicians. There’s something about having your music cut or pressed into vinyl that makes it become more permanent. Maybe this is due to how simple it is to get music put onto other formats. Anyone can burn songs to a CD, and because of this they become disposable.
I think vinyl will out live CDs, the same way it has out lived cassette tape and mini-disk. Things are being moved into the digital realm more and more, and the further things move one way, the greater the interest in the other end of the spectrum.
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Most people watch TV. In some form or another, either online or straight from the void in the corner of the room that all the furniture is pointing at. And so it won’t have escaped many peoples attention that, TV has adverts. In fact it’s becoming more and more obvious that the function of the majority of programming is just to hold our attention long enough so they can then, point out our failings, and then dangle in front of us the product that will make us acceptable human beings again. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they play music while they tell us about it.
Now this may not seem all that bad to most people. After all the majority of times it’s some generic crappy over produced and over rated song that no one this side of the red velvet ropes and private security can relate to anyways. However every now and again the advertisers over step the mark, by using music that doesn’t fall in the category stated above. Music that people listen to voluntarily, and don’t have force-fed to them.
Now maybe you’ll accuse me of being over sentimental here, and if so then please go for it, because if there’s one thing you should be sentimental about its music. It’s something that shapes our lives daily. We could each create a map of our whole life just by using the music we listened to at different stages in it. Upon listening to it, memories and emotions will be triggered that, transport us back to those moments, those people and those places, like nothing else I’ve ever come across. These songs aren’t just mere noise; they’re the silk that link our web of memories together.
So what happens when one of these songs is used in an advert? Yes the memories are triggered. The people and the places are remembered. But can something else happen? Something toxic? Can the personal meaning of a song be corroded the more an advert is seen? Can a song that once took us back to place, a person, a moment, be changed to take us to a product? Can advertisers take the emotions we have attached to these songs, and sell them back to us?
