Entertainment For Lively Minds
Album order, listening in full etc etc
I just stumbled on this story on the Beeb website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12209143
About groups of people getting together to listen to records in their entirety, in the correct order and so on.
Strikes me as more than a little beard-strokey to be honest - no talking, no going to the loo, no fast forwarding past the duff tracks. I mean, really (pffffft).
Furthermore, I recently heard a radio feature about a gadget, the Playbutton, (http://www.playbutton.co/) which is essentially buying a copy of an album that doesn't allow you to shuffle. My immediate thought was that if I want to listen to an album all the way through, in the correct order, I can do that. I don't need a gadget dictating to me how I can listen to something, just as I can read favourite chapters in favourite books without having to read the whole book.
And more than that, on vinyl I could lift the needle and move it on and on a tape I could fast forward (and often did!) so why the absurd purity now? We've always mixed it up, shuffle is just the new way to do it.
Thoughts?
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The Word's very own Kate Mossman...
went to one such gathering a few months back and wrote about it in the magazine.
I'm gonna join one
then whip ma fags out 'cause I like a good puff when I'm 'appreciating', might even take along a couple of bottles of red but only one glass.
I'm sorry but what a load of tosh
If you are so f*cked up that you need to attend some sort of organised group therapy session in order to listen to a record properly there really is no hope.
I'm sure these same people can sit and watch 48 episodes of some interminable US drama series on DVD with rapt concentration.
Sad people
I'm not sure how this is a strike against download culture. I download most of my albums these days and have for at least 5 years but I still listen from beginning to end to most albums most of the time. I didn't even know that that wasn't allowed!
Why should I care though how someone else listens to music?
Yes, I've never
downloaded any music and haven't got an ipod and, even though I cling stubbornly and vehemently to the ailing 'physical' formats, I find this studious approach rather absurd. I can't think of anything worse than a group of earnest beard-scratchers nodding intently to 'Harvest' whilst supping their Guinness. The urge to giggle must be immense.
That's it, eddie
I would just be laughing. I know it. I'm inherently foolish and immature.
I find most 'group' activities torture as I'm either trying not to laugh or trying not to murder the annoying git next to me.
I tend to shuffle my pod when I'm out and about (easily bored me), but listen to LPs at home.
And besides, I've always listened to a few tracks at a time. I don't need a self-important tit to tell me how to listen to Dark Side of The Moon or Blood on the Tracks.
soudns like our "record society" at school....
.... when I were a lad, back in the 70s. Each week a different album would be played on the school Dansette and a group of maybe 20 of us would sit at desks and listen attentively. There will be questions at the end, so pay attention (oh that bit I made up). The one I remember attending was a performance of The Stranglers first album - I would have been about 12 - and there's a bit where a rude word gets shouted rather loudly - we all waited for that bit with some amusement, coz obviously Teacher wasn't expecting it. Tee hee! Times were indeed simpler back then.
Funny that
We had a fifth year assembly where periodically we were allowed to bring a record in and play it to the gathering. The one I remember most clearly was 'Rattus Norvegicus'. I can't say this kind of thing is terribly enjoyable - listening reverentially with a group. I always find such experiences a bit awkward and uncomfortable. Not really conducive to appreciation.
Not quite the same but when I was a child we once visited a family my parents were friends with and they thought we'd all enjoy listening to a Max Boyce LP - excruciating.
How the hell
did a little club that about ten people attend get national primetime exposure?
Who's agenda are they satisfying?
I'm going to sit down in a darkened room and skip past all of my tracks on my Mac after about a second of listening to each.
That'll learn 'em.
"The £12,000 speakers were revealing little nuances of sound..."
I'm sorry, how much? I could have sworn you said 12 grand speakers...
Actually all this does is remind me of Giles Smith's "Lost In Music" where he describes listening to DSOTM with a bunch of friends (in a darkened room, I believe), at the conclusion of which one of them releases a particularly ripe fart...
This struck...
...something of a chord with me. Aged 14, my two best mates and myself used to sit in the dark at one of our houses on Saturday nights when parents went out and listen to Yes (Relayer is a particularly strong memory) on their spiffy Teac hi-fi, in the dark. These were very serious occasions.
This was partly because we had no other friends and nowhere else to go.
That said, I am slightly surprised at how little positive reaction this has generated here. I can actually think of worse things than drinking good beer and listening to music, without distractions, through a really good system.
Yeah but
not at our age.
14-18 is fine, not 35-50+ and with strangers too.