Saturday 21 March 2009

the good ship spotify






It's a voyage of discovery. Today's voyage started at Deep Purple, did a pit stop at Peter Gabriel and finished somewhere near Fats Domino. If I'm correct in my estimations the journey is probably going a little backwards. The problem with this sort of travel is that it is really quite unpredictable, you never know who will crop up along with way and who they might introduce you to. Of course, all this not knowing is rather hazardous, it insisted that I discover the wonders of Melody Gardot. She wasn't a discovery I particularly wanted to make, although she reminded me in her own sugar sweet bluesy way, that it is probably okay to outgrow your music collection. 

I'm sure you'll know exactly how I'm undertaking this bizarre trip. On the good ship Spotify of course! An invention that in the music world received so much hype I was certain it wouldn't deliver. But by bollocks! does it deliver. Right now it's delivering unadulterated David Bowie, and I'm face to face with the man who sold the world. Cue raucous applause! I'll never ever get to grips with the fact that for at least a few months of its existence I lived without this incredible feat of human invention. Supplying me with an endless archive of music that were never within my reaches or budget or living years for that matter. 

Never again will I be tortured thinking that just maybe, I was born in the wrong decade. A decade where the elders of the tribe constantly remind you that 'they just don't make them like they used to'. The green button glows it's little hello from the dock on my mac drawing the mouse ever nearer. Seconds later I'm flicking through Bonnie Raitt's back catalogue, a whole world of Bonnie Raitt at my fingertips, I'm still not sure its a good thing. The recommendations bar at the top right informs me I might also like to try Darden Smith on for size...why not, he looks about my size. 

All this music, and the only price I'm paying is having to listen to random advertisements every 3 or so songs. Self control is not even an option, every time a name pops into the void that exists where the mathematical part of my brain used to be, I'll search and fill the empty space with Joe Bonamassa or Amadou&Mariam or a John Mayer album that I never quite got round to buying. Then I'll flick on back a few years to Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis. I've had to start keeping a pen and paper next to my laptop, to scribble down names of artists who keep presenting themselves to my brain. My ears can't listen fast enough, perhaps Spotify will force them to evolve multiple listening cavities of some sort? I can only live in hope. 

Apparently 10,000 songs are uploaded onto Spotify every day. Self control has been totally abandoned and I am rejoicing in the fact that most of my friends are otherwise occupied on a Saturday night. I don't resent paying for music, in fact I love shopping for new music. It is just made virtually impossible in today's download culture to walk into a music store and listen to anything that takes your fancy. Having to read about new and obscure artists that iTunes and amazon only give me split second recordings of, doesn't allow for intelligent decision making. This is evidently one of the thousands upon millions of reasons why those lovely people somewhere in the Swedish hills came up with Spotify. 

Further reason to block out the aforementioned droning paternal guitar sound of my previous entry.

Who needs a drink?

Monday 9 March 2009

surround sound scales




Merry Christmas. This year your dad's fiancĂ© has given him guitar lessons. It seems on the surface, an innocent and benevolent gesture. It is not. 

Here's what we know about your dad. For years now he has been playing the guitar, singing along in the shrill poorly timed tones of a pre-pubescent chipmunk. His guitar skills and salary have never quite been in sync. In fact it would be safe to assume, that as the one got better, the other has taken a mind boggling nose dive. Four guitars and one too many versions of 'Summer of '69' later, you're a few radishes short of losing your mind. 

To make matters far, faaaar worse, he is in possession of an amplifier. So despite having said goodnight, and being behind the once safe enclosure, that is your bedroom door,  you can still hear the not so distant, not so bluesey version of Eric Clapton's Layla. Clapton himself is no doubt having a sleepless night at the very thought of the massacre. Layla stripped of all her blues, her off-beat, decidedly on, her swaggering confidence destroyed by a teenager sipping white lightning in a cold park.

Three lessons, with a floppy haired son-of-a-gun surely not more than 3 weeks your senior, and you're longing for the days when the rumbling downstairs was unrecognisable. Your every waking hour is interrupted by scales and screeching and wailing that no new-born baby has ever been able to match. If he confined himself to one room of the house, you could cope. You could watch Friends on surround sound, so that Ross burning his fingers on the fajitas, sounded like it was actually in your kitchen. That would be very well and good, if your dad hadn't decided to entertain both you and Ross in the living room. 

You didn't think the fiancé was evil, I bet you do now.