Music Geek: Semantics

An ex-girlfriend of mine thought that when I (or anyone) called a band’s new release a “record,” it sounded pretentious. To her, the term was an anachronism that was used by music snobs to separate themselves from the younger, presumably less informed music buying public. Pretension was never my intent. When I started buying music, I bought it on vinyl LPs, or RECORDS. I still use the term. But it does beg the question: With so many different ways to acquire and listen to music in 2005, what are the proper semantics?

Note the absence of the R-word from the names of the so-called “Big Four” music conglomerates: Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, the Warner Music Group and the EMI Group. But most of their affiliated labels, as well as the majority of indies, still attach the word “Records” to their names. Since the etymology of the word is a shortening of the term “recording,” it’s technically still correct usage. But we’ve come to think of records as those fragile, scratchy vinyl beauties / beasts (depending on your perspective).

Many also cling to the word, “album,” a term that seems to be generally more accepted by non-audiophiles even though it’s really more anachronistic than “record.” The word “album” in the context of recorded music originally referred to bound collections of 78-RPM records. The fast-playing shellac could only hold a few songs per side, so complete (usually classical) recordings had to be stretched out over up to a half a dozen discs. The pasteboard-covered collections with embossed bindings resembled photo albums more than anything else, and the name stuck. When the vinyl LP was introduced by Columbia in the late 1940s, single sleeved jackets became the standard, so the term “album” became a misnomer, but it had by then achieved a whole other meaning.

I always liked the Beat term, “Side,” as in “Hey, Daddy-O, are you hep to that new Coltrane side?” (Jazz hipsters have always had the best slang). It’s a term that’s faded, for the most part, although since CDs only have music on one “side,” it would seem to fit that format even better than a two-sided LP.

One catch-all term that never, ever sounded right to me was “tape,” as in “I shoplifted that Judas Priest tape at the mall the other day,” a sentence fraught with so many wrongs I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe it’s that the tape formats (reel-to-reel, 8-track and cassette) were all wonky and substandard at best, even with the greatest care, they were doomed to die a premature death. “Tapes” were never a permanent “record” of the music on them and anyone who used that word as their primary demarcation was just not to be taken seriously as a music collector.

I worked in the music business in the late ‘90s, at the tail end of the era of major label artist development. That seeming lifetime ago, it would always wrankle me to hear industry wanks refer to albums as “product” or “units.” I never used those words; I worked for a Record Label, not a Unit Factory. But to sales people or radio promoters who would sit in presentation meetings and reflexively nod their heads to music being played while actually not paying attention (earning the pejorative term, “woodpeckers”), nomenclature wasn’t an issue. They might as well have been selling shoes.

“Record” can be synonymous with both album and single, as can the more modern “disc,” but for some reason, neither that term nor “CD” ever caught on with music geeks as a catch-all. “Did you hear that new Sloan CD?” may be literally correct, but it lacks grace. It conjures the cold sterility of digital technology. But “disc” sounds positively poetic compared to “MP3” or “AIFF.”

When it comes to digital files that are played through a computer or portable MP3 player, terminology becomes even fuzzier. Even if an entire album is downloaded, how often is it listened to straight through as sequenced? Random playlists usually dictate iPod listening (especially if it’s via the Mini, where that’s the only option). So imagine an exchange between friends who run into each other on the street:
“Hey, what are you listening to on your iPod?”
“The new Sleater-Kinney... uh... record”

It just feels, sadly, not right. But what’s the alternative? “The new Sleater-Kinney file” sounds like an FBI security check, “Playlist” indicates a personal sequencing rather than the album’s track listing, and just leaving it hanging with “The new Sleater-Kinney” feels incomplete. Do we need to come up with a new word, a new catch-all that can be used when referring to records, CDs, tapes, MP3s, whatever? Or in this era of single-driven downloads, is the concept of a full album becoming a thing of the past?

I’m old (school) enough to continue purchasing hard copies of music that I want. But regardless of what new format the music industry forces on us, to me, they’ll still be “records.” If and when the day comes where nobody knows what I’m talking about, maybe then I’ll start calling collections of recorded music something else. How about... “Peas?” Get it? Peas in a pod? An iPod? Peas?

Okay, I’ll stick with Records.

POSTSCRIPT, October 2010:
Interesting that in five years, the main thing that has changed from when this was written is the resurgence of vinyl LPs (although it drives me insane when I hear "the kids today" refer to them as "vinyls."
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ORIGINALLY POSTED in MUSIC GEEK on MTV.COM, August 2005

Music Geek: The Fine Art of Filing

It used to be so easy. Back in the days of vinyl (yes, I’m old enough to remember them), I would bring home an album, get to know it and then file it alphabetically and chronologically within its genre on my record shelf. When I felt that The Psychedelic Furs’ “Forever Now” had become a part of the family, it went in its home, right after the band’s prior record, “Talk Talk Talk.” A record collection was easily filed and easily referenced (if not easily moved, cleaned or played).

And we anal retentive music geeks LOVE to file our collections. Remember the scene in “High Fidelity” where a heartbroken Rob Gordon (John Cusack) rearranges his massive record library autobiographically? Fellow geek Dick agrees that it’s a “comforting” notion. Surrounding yourself with your beloved records, dusting off long-dormant albums lets the music and the artwork take you back to the time when it was the soundtrack of your life.

I can remember specific details of buying many records: My friend Bill and I rode our bikes to the mall the week that Adam and the Ants’ “Kings of the Wild Frontier” came out and then carefully rode with the fragile vinyl back to his parents’ house to listen to it. When I was a Sam Goody clerk, I looked at Prefab Sprout’s “Two Wheels Good” for weeks before I finally relented and bought the record. I’d never heard the band; its cool name and evocative record jacket was enough for me to take a chance. It’s one of my ten favorite albums of all time.

But times have changed. The filing of a music collection has become complicated in the digital age. Anal retentive music fans have to contend with multiple formats, home-burned compilations, frequent reissues, an ocean of easily found “live” recordings, outsized special packaging and a world in which genres are not so clearly defined. Oh, and digital files.

I still try to stick to the method of filing everything first by genre, then alphabetically by artist, then chronologically by release date. My CDs (we’ll just ignore the vinyl for this discussion) are divided into 12 different categories: Rock, Jazz & Vocals, Country, Classical, Soundtracks, R&B, Easy Listening, Miscellaneous (an aggravatingly diverse section of artists like Nancy Sinatra or Screamin’ Jay Hawkins that could fit in numerous genres or records that defy description like the “Incredibly Strange Music” and “Golden Throats” comps), Comedy & Spoken Word, Christmas, People I Know and Homemade Comps. There are subdivisions within some of those categories and the various artists discs are arranged alphabetically by title after the “Z” within the genre. There’s also a small shelf for CDs that are packaged in flat, square sleeves rather than jewel boxes or digipacks (which I hate) as well as separate areas for boxed sets and special packages like the book version of Paul Westerberg’s “14 Songs.”

But it gets hazy. By means of example, as Juliana Hatfield’s catalogue sits on my shelf, her eight solo albums are filed chronologically, from 1992’s “Hey Babe” through last year’s “In Exile Deo” (Promo and commercial CD singles are interspersed after the album from which they were taken). After that, there’s the CDR comp I made of B-sides (from those singles and online downloads) followed by one of those unmentionable “live” CDs. But then I also filed the Some Girls CD, “Feel It” after that. Some Girls is a Juliana side project, and I just felt it belonged with her discs more than under “S.” However, the one-off Blake Babies reunion CD, 2001’s “God Bless the Blake Babies” sits among the “B” CDs with the other albums from Juliana’s former band because there’s history there.

See? It’s exhausting.

What about special edition CDs, such as last year’s 25th Anniversary Edition of the Clash’s “London Calling” (or as I like to call it, the greatest rock album ever)? While the extra disc of unearthed demos could arguably qualify it as a new release, earning placement after 1999’s live Clash anthology, “From Here to Eternity,” I prefer to keep it (as with all reissues) in the album’s original chronology, between “Give ‘em Enough Rope” and “Sandinista!”

And what to do with bootlegs (there, I used the word)? Do they get filed chronologically when the concert took place or the year the record was released (which, since there’s no copyright, is usually not noted)? Since it’s not an official release, does it get tacked at the end of the artist’s oeuvre? Or do you start a separate bootleg section altogether?

(As a side note, I am not endorsing the practice of bootlegging... far from it. While I’ll happily make compilation CDs for friends, I steadfastly refuse to copy entire albums by developing artists who find it harder and harder to get paid for their work. You like that Neko Case CD I’m playing? Go buy it.)

The quandaries don’t stop there. If a band releases a “Best of” collection while they’re still active, does that count as a regular release and consequently rest in the middle of the band’s catalogue (as with XTC’s “Compact XTC: The Singles 1978-85”)? What about bands like Matt Pond PA that are named after someone in the band? Are they filed under “M” or “P?” Are the B-52’s filed at the beginning of “B” or after the Beatles and before Big Star? Within soundtracks, the issue of sequels complicates matters. Should the various “Batman” soundtracks go by movie title or order of release? (I file by chronology again, as if Batman were the artist.)

Of course, for people who are far more likely to have their music on their computer rather than any kind of shelf, these considerations are nonexistent.

With programs like iTunes, you can choose any number of ways to organize your files with one click: By song title, artist, album, year, genre, song length, etc. What if I could push a button and have all of my CDs magically rearranged by original recording date, list price, number of times played or the color of the spine? It might be interesting to see the results, but as with all obsessive collecting, the means is at least as much the point as the ends. Record collecting isn’t passive.

Or at least it didn’t used to be. “Record Collecting” is becoming an anachronism. Today, music is more often downloaded than it is purchased, an easy process that eliminates any commitment or connection. Nobody’s ever going to remember when they downloaded a song. There’s absolutely no romance to cold, convenient technology (especially when it sounds like crap, has no visual accompaniment and is often misspelled by the sharing user). It’s a sad truism that the easier something is to acquire, the more it’s taken for granted. For many people, music is now truly disposable. Once you get tired of that Taking Back Sunday song, you can just delete it. Figuring out where it goes isn’t even an issue. It has no chance to age into either a thing of the past to sell or maybe to rediscover years down the line.

I know, I know, you’ve heard it before: the whining lament of the aging pop culture dork. “These kids today” and all that. But it doesn’t come from a place of condescension. I honestly feel bad for people who will never know the joy of debating whether Tenacious D gets filed under rock or comedy.
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ORIGINALLY POSTED in MUSIC GEEK on MTV.COM, June 2005

Ho-Ho-Hurl! The Most Hideous, Horrible Holiday CDs

All opinions about music are subjective. The most learned scholar's thoughts on Bizet's "Carmen" — or Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance," for that matter — are every bit as valid as those of the NASCAR dad who just heard the piece for the first time in a commercial.

But when it comes to Christmas music, it's even harder to be objective. More than with any other genre, our feelings about holiday music are often tied to strong personal memories. There exist punk rockers who get misty over the Ray Conniff Singers belting out "Frosty the Snowman."

Still, there are some Christmas albums that are so jaw-droppingly horrible that it's hard to imagine anyone using them for anything other than makeshift tree ornaments.

The most well-known offenders come from the top of the charts: Teen pop stars, new agers, country and R&B artists perennially flood the market with holiday albums as leaden and unenjoyable as your average fruitcake. Listing them would take up MTV's entire bandwidth, so we'll concentrate on Christmas albums that seem, even within the unique context of Christmas records, to have been a bad idea from the start.


Like, say, 40 minutes of cats yowling Christmas carols.

Novelty records are called that for a reason: Novelty wears off. It's hard to imagine anyone who can sit through an entire Jingle Cats Christmas album, let alone two. Enough people bought 1993's Meowy Christmas, comprised of cats' meows edited to approximate the melodies of Christmas carols, that a sequel was whelped, Here Comes Santa Claws. Not to be outdone, the Jingle Dogs let out Christmas Unleashed the following year. These housebroken holiday albums are so migraine-inducing that they make the Chipmunks seem soothing.

A catlike singer offering a double dose of holiday pleasure is Rosie O'Donnell, who also released two Christmas albums, dueting with such luminaries as Celine Dion, Cher, Donny Osmond, Ricky Martin, Lauryn Hill and many more, including Elmo the Muppet. This is the breed of awful vanity project that only someone with Rosie's power can get off the drawing board. However, since the proceeds from these records go to charity, we can't be too mean, but taken on their own merits ... well ... never mind ...

Ever had to suffer through the strained, off-key versions of carols sung by relatives? That's basically the effect achieved by Christmas With the Brady Bunch, the first and most painful of the many Brady-related albums. Regardless of how strong your nostalgia for the Bradys may be, there's no enjoyable "Sunshine Day"-esque kitsch quality to these tracks: This is just a wad of traditional carols sung badly by melodically challenged kids. It actually makes one pine for the vocal stylings of Florence Henderson ... or even Sam the butcher!

How many Bon Jovi fans own his holiday album? No, not his appearances on the Very Special Christmas series, but his performance on 1980's Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album, when the well-coiffed singer was still the struggling John Bongiovi. The record is one of those knockoff slabs of product that makes Jessica Simpson's Re-Joyce seem like Handel's sequel to "Messiah." The Meco-produced music is cheesily synthesized, and the songs are supposed to be funny in the way old vaudeville jokes are funny (as in: not). Anthony Daniels (C3PO) "sings" about "The Odds Against Christmas" (365 to 1, get it?) and probably not even Han Solo ever asked the question, "What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)" This is only for the brand of Star Wars geeks who are already lined up for next summer's "Episode III."

The connection between "Star Wars" and Christmas might seem like a stretch, but it's nothing compared to the unholy alliance of classic pop vocals and dance beats. The 2003 album, "Christmas Remixed: Holiday Classics Re-grooved" takes vintage chestnuts, like Bing Crosby singing "Jingle Bells" and Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song," and turns them over to DJs such as Dan the Automator and Baz Cuts for some beats and loops — and the resultant songs are every bit as horrifying as you'd imagine. It's impossible to envision a fan of either of these genres (or even that handful of broad-minded folk who appreciate both) having any reaction to this amalgam other than a wince of pain.

And even the most broad-minded Lynyrd Skynyrd fans must have scratched their heads over 2000's Christmas Time Again. It's one thing for a few members to resurrect the band's name for cash-in tours, but a Christmas album? That is so not rock, dude — especially with some of the faux-classical pieces mixed in with the southern blues rock on this weirdly juxtaposed collection. Thankfully, there's no "Free Partridge" ...

Aside from Jimmy Buffett's truly diehard fans (known as Parrotheads), the beach-loving singer's 1996 Christmas Island would seem to appeal to either baby boomers who hate winter but love Christmas or ... well, actually, that's the only possible audience for this record we can imagine. A faux-reggae "Jingle Bells" that incorporates steel drum? Clearly, the sunshine has been getting to someone.

And we haven't even gotten to the holiday albums from the Looney Tunes (two albums of unfunny nuggets that must have left Mel Blanc spinning in his grave), the California Raisins, Mr. Hankey, the Crypt Keeper, Dread Zeppelin, Elmo & Patsy (the other Elmo), and this year we've been treated to Hung for the Holidays by, you guessed it, William Hung. And we really don't need to go into detail about last year's Flatulina's Fabulous Holiday Spectacular, do we? Good.

Flat, shiny lumps of coal, all. But every record released has at least some fans — OK, one fan — and it's not our place to question. The holidays are supposed to be a time of good will towards our fellow man — even if our fellow man owns and loves all three Kenny G Christmas albums. Brrrr ...
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ORIGINALLY POSTED in MUSIC GEEK on MTV.COM, December 2004