I have sad, sad news to report, friends of the Hotel. The days of flipping through the albums/cds in the music store and finding your way to new music, reading the backs of the albums, evaluating the "blurbs" from critics that they sticker (always over the name of the artist or the tracklist, you know) are going the way of the Drive-In-Movie. Flipping through records and being drawn to album covers is a dying experience. Borders is basically dismantling their music section, and when I asked "Are you cutting out your CD section or just moving it?" the clerk responded, "You can always order on Borders.com!" I wanted to say, if I'd wanted to order online, I would have stayed at home! Which is to the point, where's the touch, and feel, and look of just taking your time and hoping you'll discover something rather than go online and find what you already want! Maybe, I'm weird, but finding something new has always been the most fun of going in to a music store.
I found Mary Gauthier just by looking, and thankfully having the cash on hand to take a chance on a new artist just because of the album cover and the "sticker-blurb" describing her music. I can't believe I would have been drawn to her in any other way, and I know it sounds silly, but my life is better because I have her music in it, and Eliza Gilkyson's and Idgy Vaughns, most of them I discovered quite accidentally.
Yesterday , I took a chance on a group called MGMT, and I have just put it on my iPod and watched their first video . . . Time to Pretend, which you can see on YouTube! through this link
It's not the second coming of the Beatles, but it reminded me of the first time I heard The Scissor Sisters . . . something new and upbeat, and electric, and derivative of the music of my youth and yet still fresh and new and fun. (By the way, does anyone else think that the fun has been missing in pop music for a while?) This cut will be on the next sampler, by the way, and I've found so much new music in the past two weeks, we may see an early edition of the Summer Sampler (not to be confused with the 2 Disc Summer Blow Out Spectacular, which will be handed out at the Memorial Day Extravaganza, this year).
Anyway, I have work to do around the Hotel this morning, and then I am planning solo pool time with my iPod and my new music.
New Music . . . and Old Friends - - My Favorite Combination.
I love you all!
The Proprietor
1 comment:
Q, I feel much the same about browsing for books. There are several cherished authors I have discovered by accident while wondering slowly down the aisles of book stores with my head bent to one side like a stroke victim, perusing titles, books edges, colors, who knows what catches one's eye, especially when you can only see the EDGE of a book. And yet something DOES catch the eye and make a connection, and I sometimes wonder if it's a type of destiny that led me to a few books I love.
I suppose the same thing can happen online; destiny's not likely to be frustrated by our feeble technologies. But to an old geezer such as myself, bookstore browsing is the best type of magic.
That said, I've found a few highly desired books in just a few minutes online. So maybe the web is the place to go when I know exactly what I'm looking for, and the bookstore is the place to let the magic happen. But I DO like the automatic recommendations list on Amazon. Sorry! :D
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