The Broadband/ iPod Years
Having wandered through the past forty-three years listening to more than my share of music the more or less inevitable question is What next?
The inevitable response is probably more of the same (more or less). After all, having spent so much time chasing down some of these things all that time and effort would be wasted if I were to just stop.
And, in any case, I've enjoyed it.
From the time I started getting interested in music back around 1966, through the halcyon days when I was part of a circle of fans who were fired by a mixture of motives to explore what was out there, taking in the years where it was more or less a solo voyage of intermittent and more or less random discovery, into the today's digital landscape I've found a lot of interesting music, and I know there's still an unknown quantity of it out there.
The journey through the bayous, backwaters, and paths less trodden has been interesting, and, to be quite honest I see no reason why it should stop until such time as I shuffle off the mortal coil and join the choir invisible....
But after the way that things have developed it's hard to imagine that there's too much that's actually new lurking around the corner. There's already a plethora of recordings covering just about every musical genre known to humanity and you'd expect that every form of fusion between genres has been explored over the past few years.
So I'm not expecting much in the way of exciting new earth-shattering discoveries.
On the other hand I'm sure that out there among that vast quantity of recorded music there are still more than a few gems to be unearthed. As well, just about everything that has ever been recorded now exists in some sort of digital form and should be downloadable through some (not necessarily official) source.
That last aside reflects the reality of a growing network of digital sources that will prove almost impossible to monitor, let alone supervise or control. They'll try, mind you. Rupert Murdoch, to take one example wants to develop some form of user pays model, and I can't help thinking that the fuss about child pornography and kids' access to the internet is coming as much from those who want to regulate, monitor and, most importantly, control the flow of data on the Web.
As a music consumer, however, I'm highly relieved that the coming of the broadband era has ushered in an age where people just about anywhere in the developed world can get more or less instantaneous access to almost anything that has been digitized.
No more poring over catalogues, scanning release sheets, placing orders with disinterested shop assistants and waiting to see whether distributors are actually going to despatch what you ordered. A web browser, a good search engine, an increasing awareness of where to look and you're off. Bob's your uncle and the musical world's your oyster.
What you order might take awhile to actually reach you, assuming you're looking at a physical product. After all, there are the vagaries of the postal system to contend with, but it's a vast improvement on what went before.
Changes in my financial situation have meant that I'm in a position where I can afford to buy more, rather than less, recorded music and I expect that Hughesy's music library will continue to grow between now and whenever it is that they put me in the pine box and cart me away.
That's a prospect that would have 'Er Indoors rolling her eyes, given the quantity of recorded music that's already inside the Little House of Concrete.
The best part of the digital download side of things is the fact that digital data doesn't take up a lot of actual shelf space. Of course there are drawbacks that come with the format - a purist would raise sound quality issues for a start - but the fact that I can buy a copy of an album without having to find space on the CD shelves is, as far as I'm concerned, a definite plus.
And, yes, I know the negatives. I miss the liner notes, credits, gatefold sleeves and all the other packaging that we used to bury ourselves in as we listened to the new album by whoever we were into at the time.
But, that's what it was - packaging. And in an environment where we're increasingly put off by the fact that the takeaway food that the average customer comes inside a coupler of trees' worth of paper and cardboard containers we're looking to cut down on packaging, aren't we?
After all, it's not as if there aren't a number of other sources of information about what you're listening to, and if you've ended up using the computer as your primary storage and playback device you've probably got them at your fingertips.
But wait - there's more.
If you're using the computer as your primary storage and playback device, there's the option of transferring that data to one of a range of devices that you can carry with you.
I've gone for the iPod, but there are, of course, others.
Given the possibility that the lifestyle over the next few years is likely to consist of frequent absences from our home base in Bowen, the fact that I can carry a substantial chunk of the collection with me on the iPod is another definite plus.
I can't take it all with me, but at the moment the capacity of the iPod allows me to take most of my official CD collection with me. Not all of it, but more than enough to keep me satisfied and take care of whatever listening requirements my current writing projects bring with them.
There's also the possibility of creating a playlist tailored to a particular scenario - a trip on the Ghan, a visit to New Orleans or a stay in a Tuscan farmhouse, to pick three examples that could turn up over the next few years.
Better still, a modest outlay has delivered a little system that didn't cost the earth, recharges the iPod, plays its contents, sounds remarkably good and has some substantial improvements on the old click wheel provided you're willing to exercise a little patience. It's still a long way short of what I'd like, but as we get ourselves organised a little better...
So, from here on, it looks like we're right for music when we go travelling, and travelling is an increasingly viable option.
Until I finished work, of course, travelling was something I did, along with everyone else, during the school vacations, which are the times when things are least affordable.
It also meant that, should someone I was interested in seeing be touring Australia, they more than likely weren't going to be doing so during the hol idays, and were also, given the relative sizes of the Australian capitals, likely to be playing Brisbane mid-week rather than on a weekend.
Readers who've wondered why Hughesy's musical reminiscences contain few references to concerts might've assumed a lack of interest . Actually, for most of my life while I wanted to go there was some sort of scheduling or financial constraint in operation.
Discussions of concerts I've attended over the years will be found, predictably, in Concerts Over The (Townsville) Years and Concerts Over The (Bowen) Years.
A perfect example of what I've missed sprang to mind as I sit tapping away a couple of days out of an Elvis Costello concert. Costello has been to Australia on a reasonably regular basis over the years, usually away from school vacations, and a couple of times at the very end of January. I was all set to book seats to an Elvis concert with Steve Nieve when I took a look at the calendar.
As a teacher there are about ten days when you need to be on deck to avoid having the Human Resources people start asking questions that might bring a significant financial impost - the first and last days of each of the four terms and the first pupil-free day for the school year account for nine of them, and there's probably another one lurking somewhere in the calendar each year.
And the show I was looking at?
Right there on the first pupil free day.
Having finished work, however, those constraints are no longer in place, and I've caught Richard Thompson, Eric Clapton (with Derek Trucks), Costello, and Ry Cooder with Nick Lowe over the past few years. As I transfer this article across from the old Music Pages to the new improved version I’m three weeks out from an excursion to catch Leonard Cohen.
Not as much action as I'd have liked, but still better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.
Scheduling our trip to Adelaide at the wrong end of November 2008 meant that we missed the chance to catch the Derek Trucks Band at the Adelaide Guitar Festival.
Financial constraints in the form of a possibly substantial Trustees' bill involved with the administration of my late father's estate ruled out a trip south that could have included concerts by Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Jeff Beck, but those issues have been settled, and the possibilities have opened up considerably.
Most importantly, Hughesy's escape from the workforce has brought time to do what I'm most interested in doing, namely continuing to explore what's out there and to catch up on the things that have slipped by over the years.
Now, as far as catching up is concerned, it'd probably be handy if I still had all those copies of Rolling Stone, NME, Melody Maker, Zig Zag and the other assorted magazines I've bought over the years. I don't, and they'd probably take up most of the internal space in the Little House of Concrete if I did, but I do have a couple of shelves full of Uncut and Mojo, and they're probably more than enough.
Actually, having reached the point where the shelves are full, the process of culling has commenced.
I'm not really into movies, so when it comes to starting the cull, the movie content in an issue of Uncut makes it the obvious starting point.
Over the past few months I've been gradually going through the Uncut shelf, issue by issue, scanning articles that I think I might still need to keep and adding books, albums or DVDs that might be of interest to a couple of shopping lists which can, conveniently, be carried with me on the iPod. Handy.
First off, where albums are concerned, it's a matter of checking whether they're available through iTunes. Most of them are, but if they're not the details go into a CD shoppin' list I can refer to when I get to a decent CD shop or go browsing through one of the other on-line outlets.
There are also lists of DVDs, music books, fiction and works by favourite authors, and since our status as rate payers on the Gold Coast entitles us to a library card, it's not necessarily a case of buying things on those lists.
So, as we head off into a future of indefinite duration, one that I know is going to come to an end but will hopefully refrain from doing so for awhile yet, the prospective more of the same is going to be a much better organised version than would have been possible without the arrival of broadband and the iPod
