How am I such an old person? I can remember thinking it was mildly funny, back in the day, how that old people didn’t use e-mail and were nervous about the internets. I still make fun of people with AOL e-mail accounts. Now, I have only recently saved myself from ending up just like those people, quaking in my dress shoes at the thought of technology somehow changing. My downfall, I still like to buy CDs. Actual tangible discs full of music. I never have gotten in to downloading music from iTunes or its competitors. I have downloaded some from Amazon’s mp3 service, just because they’ll do silly sales and I’ll be able to score music I have been wanting for $5 or less. But there is something truly wonderful about walking into Waterloo, talking a left to look through all of the new arrivals, then cruising past the too-cool clerks to get to the long bins of the newly arrived used CDs. I love doing that. I used to have a period off from high school at the end of the day, and I would go sit in the little booths Waterloo used to have, jamming out whatever Rolling Stone had told me was the new big thing. I have such good memories of those times. The rooms were like little closets, with two nice Cerwin Vegas up near the ceiling, a glass door out to the store, and a remote to control the disc that the clerk had put into the machine. You could just pump the volume and bliss out with something for as long as you wanted. So great. And perusing the used bins is always a good time for me – unearthing a copy of some old stuff you haven’t heard since high school, or landing on a copy of a brand new album you wanted. Relaxing and exciting all at the same time. Anyway, there is just something great about the record store experience, and then walking out of there to fight with the plastic wrap and security stickers on the disc case so that you can have that first listen in the car. This summer, I just chilled in the parking lot, with the new Queens of the Stone Age rocking out for me. This is one of the ways that I can feel right with the world.
I digress. One of my co-workers has been talking up Spotify for a while. I was snobbish in return. “You see, 26 year old cool kid, I have like 30,000 songs on this laptop over here and can just jam all of my tunes any time I want. I am a superior music listener. Oh, you want to hear the first Nirvana album? Right here. You want to hear Ice Cube? I’ve got every album and some stuff from soundtracks. Here’s the 1993 KLBJ-FM Local Licks live album that is not very good at all, but I have the whole thing. Right here. I rule.” My friend would try to explain, I would nod along, and he would give up for a little while. Well, the woman needed my music laptop, so I lost my cool musical source in the office. Our IT department is hardcore and makes it an exceedingly large pain in the ass to listen to hard-drive music on the work-issued machines, so after a few attempts to stick my hard drive of music onto the work computer, I decided I’d give Spotify a shot. And holy shit. I mean, seriously, holy shit. You just get to tell it what you want to listen to, and it complies. I wanted to hear the new Jay-Z and try out the new Savages album. Yep. There they are, free to hear as many times as you want. What? I still can’t comprehend how this is possible. Yes, if you don’t pay for premium, you have to hear an ad every 4 or 5 songs, but it is a short little thing that doesn’t bother me too much yet. I’ve started a playlist that has all of the new albums I can think of in it, and now I just jump in there and listen to new stuff all day long. I’ve also made a playlist of classic albums and have been going back in there as well. Another cool thing has been listening to classics: Bobby Blue Bland died, so I jammed his greatest hits. I’d always wanted to hear Bad Brains and Black Flag, so I did. If this would have existed in high school, I don’t think I would have left the house. Now I have discovered playlists – you can load up playlists that other people have created, like Pitchfork’s greatest 100 songs of 2012 (cool!), a mix of all the artists playing ACL 2013 (cool until it mixes in something from the HEB Kiddie Acres stage about squirrel nuts), or whatever else. Only once have I been fully rebuffed – they do not have the Atoms for Peace album on here. And some soundtracks are only partially on here. But otherwise, it is the crazy-insane sonic buffet of my dreams.
