Monday-morning musings
I have an old-fashioned “boom box” in the downstairs floor of our apartment, and recently the CD-playing function of it gave up its electronic ghost. I suppose the ultimate thing to do will be to get speakers for my iPod and download all my CDs onto that, but in the meantime, I’m rediscovering my tape collection, in all its Talking-Headed, Julee Cruise-ing, Sting-ing, Breakfast Clubbed glory, and let us remember, Tom Waits for no man.
What did you listen to “back in the day” and do you still listen to it? Do you listen primarily to the music you learned to love in your teens and 20s, or do you continue to find new things? What’s the most embarrassing album in your collection? When you listen to the music of “back in the day” can your critical functions actually engage, or does the nostalgic emotion overwhelm you?
That was one set of things that my little technical mishap got me thinking of. The other is something that’s been on my mind a lot, as the cultural conversation turns more and more to frugality and reducing waste, both for financial reasons and the good of the planet. Mr. Improbable and I do try to live a relatively non-consumerist lifestyle, although that makes it sound much more like an Official Ideological Position than we experience it — on a day-to-day basis, we simply try to do buy the cheapest versions of things when that makes sense and invest money in the “good version” when that makes sense; do our research on major purchases; take good care of the stuff we’ve got; and only buy things that we really need or want, and not for the sake of keeping up with the Joneses.
We do pretty well spending by our values, I think, except when it comes to technology. It seems are always having to get a new laptop, or digital camera, or some damn thing or other, because of compatibility issues. A hundred years ago, your mule died, you’d have to get a new mule, but you wouldn’t have to also get a new harness and plow because your old one was incompatible with Mule 2.0.
I’m enjoying channeling my 80s self and bopping around the apartment to Cyndi Lauper while I clean or pay bills. But sooner or later the tape player function will die, too, and then what? It feels that there’s no option that doesn’t lead straight to premature obsolescence and waste.
Does this bug you, too?
Or, you can just talk about the most embarrassing music you listen to. We can go heavy or light today. It’s a Monday. Your call.
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9 Responses to “Monday-morning musings”
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I love my 80s cheese, particularly for doing chores. Most embarrassing? Probably Dead or Alive’s _Rip It Up_. It’s still got a great beat, though!
My hope would be that, once you have your music in a digital format, you’d be able to play it on whatever comes along. Of course, you have to assume that the music industry is just going to come up with new and nefarious ways to continue making everyone’s music collections obsolete. :p
Hope, I would hope that too, but I think that the industries are going to do exactly as you say. This is where I don’t really feel guilty about our over-consumption of electronics, because we’re not gadget-happy. But I’m also more despairing, because I don’t feel that there’s really individual choices we can make that will enable us to be less wasteful.
The simplest way to keep our digital music collections from becoming obsolete is to refuse to buy any music files that aren’t in mp3 format. Copy-protected formats will stop being supported as soon as someone cracks the copy-protection, and then you’ll have nothing.
I am normally a technophile but confess to being extremely irritated at all the Blu-Ray/HD hype. We were supposed to throw out our videotapes and buy DVDs, and now we’re supposed to throw out our DVDs.
I read about a study wherein people were shown movies on various sizes and resolutions of video screens. The researchers found that once the number of pixels passed a certain threshold, the number of pixels stopped mattering. No one noticed the difference between normal video and HD; they only noticed the size of the screen.
It reminds me of the “audiophile” sound systems where they sell you special gold-plated connector cables for ten times the cost.
Still love Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and the really old John Prine.
Mule 2.0! Very funny. I understand that the free market allows all this specialization, but every little once in a while I’d like some standardization. My recycling jones is not rewarded by having to throw out chargers that deliver exactly the same current but have different connectors. I really wish I could travel with just one cord, not a snake-like mess.
Hey, nice to see you here, still-learning! Welcome.
Do not even START with me on the cords issue. One day I will go completely around the bend and run out in the street in my nightgown, tearing my hair and shrieking, “The cords! The cords! The cords, cords, cords!” like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.
I’ve been thinking about getting a beaded curtain to section off our storage room from the rest of the apartment, maybe I’ll just make one with all these *&)*$%^%$^ extra charger cords we have lying around!
What timing — I was just thinking at work today, “Boy, I hope no one asks me what I’m listening to on my headphones right now.” I was listening to Abba.
My absolute favorite tapes are the ones my college roommate and I made back in the early 80s. I had inherited my older sister’s 45s from the 60s, and my roommate had 45s from the 70s. We stacked up those 45s on my mom’s tape deck with turntable, and created these two wild tapes, mixing up styles and eras. I don’t remember why, but I ended up with the tapes, and sort of forgot about them for 20 years. Then they popped up one day, and now I love listening to them. Talk about nostalgia. I made copies of the tapes for my roommate and gave them to her for her 45th birthday. I suppose I should migrate them over to CDs before the tapes break (I have a friend who does this kind of migration).
Diane, if anyone ever saw the “Workout Songs” playlist on my iPod, I would DIE OF SHAME.
Amen on the cords!