By Bernie Bell
I realised that, when I previously wrote of having “ a C.D. rack full of life and joy and groove and The Funk” https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/07/03/thank-goodness-for-music/ , young persons might think… ”Eh? What are C.D’s?” They have pretty much been superseded by all kinds of on-line access to music – often meaning that bits & pieces of music are downloaded, jumbled together, to make a playlist of favourites, in no particular order.
I like C.D.’s. I never got on too well with vinyl – I’m someone who can’t polish shoes without getting polish on everything ( tho’, I have a feeling young persons might not polish shoes much these days, either!). I can’t eat jam or chocolate without getting it everywhere. Sticky fingers and vinyl records, don’t mix. I have also been known to drop things on them accidentally, including a hard to acquire Marvin Gaye L.P. which someone leant me from his prized record collection. He was good enough to forgive me, but never leant me another record! That happened 40 odd years ago, and it still forms a large deposit in my ‘guilt account’.
C.D’s still present the music, as the musicians meant it to be presented, as a whole, not as bits & pieces, chopped up and mixed with other bits & pieces to make some kind of mix/mess.
The listener is presented with the tracks, in the order envisaged by the people who then laid the tracks down – in that order.
What I do miss, is the album covers, which also had a lot of thought and artistry involved in their making. The abbreviated version you find inside a C.D. cover, mostly isn’t a match for the original art work.
I used to have the album of ‘Physical Graffiti’ by Led Zeppelin – I now have the C.D. (of course I have), which I still listen to – a lot. When I need to be lifted, I listen to ‘In The Light…
……when I need to groove out – ‘Kashmir’…
The Man Himself – doing what he does.
But, the C.D. insert is not a contender, when compared with the intricacy of the original album cover fold-out.
See what I mean? And that’s just one example.
Vinyl is having a come-back among the youth – but I’ll stick with C.D.’s because – I get sticky!
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Years ago after I’d built my own PC I copied all my CD’s on to an external memory and I still use it to ‘burn’ my own favourite CD’s for playing in the car. In fact, even before CD’s I used to do the same thing with ‘Cassettes’. The youngsters are only taking it to the next logical step – so there’s nothing new under the sun. Are you aware that there is a mass of popular music available for free if you do a ‘Google Search’?
Yikes! A mass of popular music on google – yikes! In some ways, I am a plodding person – I look at the CD rack, choose something, put it on our CD player, and …listen to it.
I’m just not computer orientated. I mostly use the computer for writing things – tho’ you might have noticed, I do lift tracks from Youtube, for inclusion with what I write. That’s very useful.
This morning, I checked out TON, to find that my C.D’s piece was there, which meant that I listened to Zeppelin, while I ate my toast – as Mike put it – I got my morning ‘fix’! No’ bad. Robert, at 7.30 in the morning.