A Good Record Collection Used to Mean Something
I was recently involved in an e-mail discussion about this article on reclaiming Bob Marley's legacy. (It made some interesting points about the fullness of Marley's work being misrepresented by the greatest hits CD Legend, which is one of the best-selling CDs of all time. But I thought it was a bit much to blame our misunderstanding of Marley's true legacy on the fact that college freshmen like him.) Our comments took a bit of a side road into the subject of the sudden easy access to once-obscure music. That reminded me of a column from last summer in The New Republic, of all places. Michael Crowley wrote an essay that touches on Rock Snobs and the ubiquity of everything on an iPod. I'd intended to bring it to your attention shortly after it came out, but Hurricane Katrina sort of hijacked all my blog content for a little while. (Warning--The New Republic is a subscription site, but I seem to be able to bring that page up once or maybe twice before it hides it in the pay-only section of the site.) Feel free to weigh in on whether iPods are the greatest thing ever or are evil beyond measure.
posted by Doug @ 6:26 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Owning something no one else has is only one part of Rock Snobbery as I see it. The knowledge should still be the meat of being a rock snob. Just because some college dude has that rare track or album on his iPod doesn't mean he knows where it came from or anything about who performed it. The Internet has done similar damage to that secret knowledge base in that info about any rare track or artist is instantly available. But only true snobs would retain such knowledge in their head and still seek out the original album or CD rather than just storing it in their iPods.
The Talking Heads' "Found a Job" runs through my head constantly these days. Life cannot be cataloged and consumed, it can only be created. (Yes, I did have a martini this evening, why do you ask?)
That's a good point, Ron. I'll just think of Bob and Judy.
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