Hey y’all!
I did something earlier this month I have not done in at least twelve years: I bought a CD.
I don’t mean I added an album to my streaming playlist. And I didn’t even buy the MP3 version. I mean, I bought a physical CD, which somebody (probably a robot) put in a padded envelope, and I waited three days, and it was in my mailbox.
It happened like this: I was doing some digital cleanup because my hard drive was at 75% capacity, and I’m a digital hoarder. It was a rainy day, and I had a horrible headache (rainy days always give me headaches) so I put on my rainy day jazz playlist and just started deleting things. Do I really need that screenshot from five years ago?
No, I do not.
Which is when I came across a folder on my computer called “Music”. I had honestly forgotten it was there. And in it were dozens of albums of music I own, and hundreds of individual songs. The Beatles. America. Thelonious Monk. Taize. Albert King. The Beastie Boys.
Some I can remember which record store I bought them from; can remember standing in the store, listening to the samples over the headphones. Others I bought online as MP3s. Some go all the way back to the LimeWire and Napster days.
Longtime readers may be shocked to discover I own this much music because I have stated often in these pages that I’m not really a music person. But that is only true if my basis of comparison is my wife, whose relationship to music is very different from my own. She feels music in a way that I do not, to the point she has preferred recordings of individual songs.
My own relationship to music is much more pedestrian: There is music I like, and music I don’t, but I don’t have music constantly playing in my car or office, I don’t go to live shows, and I’m tone deaf.
And in the old days, when I heard songs I liked, I would buy those CDs so I could listen whenever I wanted. But then streaming came along, and now I can listen to almost anything I want, whenever I want.
But I’m trying to live a life less dependent on companies owned by billionaires these days. After 25 years of being chronically online, I’m trying to distance myself from a life dependent on an internet connection. And I recognize streaming services pay the artists squat.
So when I found myself in a mood to listen to Dylan, rather than tell the device, “Alexa, play Bob Dylan”, I went online and bought a CD (his second album, which I did not own). And when it arrived, I ripped the songs to that folder on my hard drive, and then I put the CD on the shelf, so I have them, even if my computer should die a horrible death.
I know buying one CD changes nothing, not really. But it means I am ever so slightly more independent from companies that have very different agendas than mine. And these days, any independence is worth celebrating.
I’m not good at discovering new music. If you have a favorite album in literally any genre, I would love to know what it is. I have some catching up to do.
