Entertainment For Lively Minds
ipod vs albums
In the latest Word mag Keifer Sutherland (I wonder if anyone ever calls him Keef ?) says he doesn't own an ipod because he'd rather listen to individual albums. He mentions Rumours and a couple of Elton John records as examples of albums which make sense throughout, ie where "each song informs the next one" and where the overall album has an individual feel. As opposed to selecting only certain songs "and stringing them together on an ipod"
Apart from the fact that in practice you can obviously listen to complete albums in their entirety on an ipod if you choose, I have mixed feelings on this.
When I was young and had relatively few records I tended to play both sides of a record all through and appreciated the album as a whole. This was partly because I didn't have that much choice then of what to play anyway, but also probably because the old 40 minute LP had less filler and albums were generally stronger. But even at that time I'm not sure that the majority of albums really held together consistently (though old favourites like Blood on the Tracks, Desperado, Astral Weeks, Ziggy Stardust etc clearly did). And in recent years there have been very few albums released where I could be bothered to play every track.
On the other hand I also enjoy the random quality of an ipod on shuffle, for the same reason that I've always enjoyed the nature of radio, where you don't know what's going to be played next.
Apologies if this has been debated before on this site, but any thoughts ?
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ipod
As someone who grew up on singles, I don't revere albums that much. Even albums I do love as albums, like Exile on Main St, are albums that work when listened to as sides as well, and as individual tracks.
There may be a handful of classic albums that are best enjoyed from side 1 track 1 all the way through, and are best in that order - but if that is 5% of the average listener's collection I'd be astonished. My iPod opens up all the things I mean to get around to, especially box sets, where I would take ages to get around to opening up the Rhino "Loud, Fast & Out Of Control", or the Ray Charles 50th Anniversary, or any of the Miles Davis ones but the ipod has them all either for listening at random or in the compiled order.
When I first got my ipod, I thought of it as "radio me". If you follow Keifer Sutherland's thought through to the logical conclusion, the radio is also a bad way to listen to music because that only plays one track at a time.
And as you say, you still have the ability to listen to the album in the released sequence if you want.
I tend to listen to albums in their entirety...
as I think one should listen to the crap songs on records as they make the great ones sound even better. I have argued this point before on a thread 'The Importance Of Clunkers On Albums'.
Horses for courses
Having had some weeks of listening to a combination of new LPs and to new downloads, cobbled together onto CDRs, yesterday i fancied a change and selected 4 cds for the car, enjoying the whole experience once more. Yet, as I type, and I can't imagine it any other way, i-tunes is on random. Time and place.
Can't shuffle new albums
I'm still a complete album man. I have an old ipod full of individual tracks that I sometimes put on shuffle but my main one is just used for albums and podcasts. If you listen on shuffle, the only way of knowing what you're listening to is to keep taking it out of your pocket. My ipod only has 7.2 days of music on it but if I listen on random and it doesn't ever repeat a track, if I listen on average for 5 hours a day (at work) it will be 7 weeks before I've heard all the tracks, as I add 6 or 7 albums a month I may never get to hear some tracks from new albums if I leave it on shuffle. What if the track I don't hear is the one that should have made me investigate an artist further?
smart playlist
to help with this I set up a smart playlist of "tracks loaded in the last month where playcount is zero".
that way I can always easily find the new unlistened stuff
I'm a shuffle gal
For practical reasons. I have a young son so my music listening is more limited than I'd like at home due to time constraints, then add in the fact my walk to work only takes 20 minutes or so & you find without shuffling you just end up listening to the same songs all the time. It may be wrong in the eyes of some but, hey, practicalities people!
Albums
I tend to listen to music predominantly in the album format. Similarly, with other songs by an artist I will make a collection of chronological b-sides on my mp3 player, to create a more cohesive listen. There's a few odd songs on there by people I haven't investigated further, but I don't tend to pick them out very often and rarely use the random function (though the ramdomiser thread has started me using it a little more).
I do sometimes do compilations for in the car though
I tend towards albums
Even if it isn't necessarily the case that one song informs another, I tend to feel that there is a sense of purpose in creating an album. Generally my favourite artists (and thus thier albums) create an atmosphere that binds the songs together, whether they have a thematic link or not. My preferred recent example is the National's Boxer, which doesn't have a clear narrative thread, but evokes an inner-city ennui sparked by the piano intro of 'Fake Empire', which carries through to the almost grudging acceptance of 'Gospel'. Of course, there are also examples of albums that don't really fit the Shuffle function: Of Montreal's Skeletal Lamping would be baffling I'm sure.
Having said that, it is often the case that albums don't grab my attention immediately due to the fairly rapid rate at which I consume music. Sometimes, then, a single track pops up on shuffle that opens my mind to the rest of the album. This happened most recently with the Drones' Havilah: expecting something different, I initially found the album disappointing, until the thundering 'Oh My' came up and became a key to the rest of the album for me.