Thursday night ride home, up I-95 N on dry roads and heavy traffic.
My right hand rests on the dial.
So, DK, what’s it gonna be?
Radio, with its 50+ stations?
Sirius, with its 100 channels?
iPhone playlists, with 5437 tunes?
Or, Pandora streaming, with its infinite candy?
So much candy, yet never satisfied, yearning for the familiar grooves.
McEwen answers in World Enough & Time: “Intake, for example: how much is enough?”
And Simon Reynolds follows: “Complaining that there’s too much good art and entertainment being made at the moment seems churlish — how could that be a problem? Yet it’s undeniable that there is something curiously oppressive about the current bounty, something paralyzing about our ease of access to it. keeping up with what’s good gets to seem like a chore. If anything, the overload in music feels even more unmanageable.”
And in flows nostalgia. An ache…
For the 70s.
For eight track players, cassette decks and RCA record players, scratched discs and poor quality speakers.
For Bob Seger’s Night Moves.
For Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
For Eagles’ The Long Run.
For the handful of albums and songs grooved in from thousands of replays.
I lip sync the chorus from Seger’s Night Moves: I remember. I remember. I remember.
And eat the comfort food sitting at Paul Lisicky‘s table: “The table, this bread, forks lifting again and again to our mouths.”
And back to Simon Reynolds to wrap: “Conversely, one of the downsides of the age of plenty is that the more widely you listen outside your well-worn grooves, the more frequently you’ll experience disappointment, distaste or just indifference. More is less.”
My hand spins on the dial to 70s on 7 – the ear warms to the familiar of the first two bars, the mind locks in, the shoulders begin to sway and the lips move with Mercy, Mercy Me – – things aren’t what they used to be…
We’re home.
Notes:
- Photo: Takashi Kitajima
- Related Posts: Commuting Posts
Live & Learn 
We don’t listen to music like we did when we were in high school….play the entire album, again and again…good songs, bad songs….we memorized every line and can still recite most of them today. I get to play some of that out this evening.
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Exactly Ray. Exactly…Enjoy tonight.
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More is less. In my car, I opt for the randomness of oldies radio, especially one with a 60’s to 80’s focus. Perfect. 💖
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I too am locked in on 70s on 7.
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Pandora
“So much candy, yet never satisfied”
That is exactly what it is, Ggggrrr.
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Smiling. Exactly.
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Coincidentally, I came here directly from here: http://www.salon.com/2016/02/20/stop_buying_old_bob_dylan_albums_every_time_somebody_buys_a_reissue_theyre_just_taking_money_away_from_new_musicians/
Flip side.
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Ross, thanks for sharing. Fascinating. I’m on Apple Music plan. Not sure what impact that has on whom….
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I fall between both camps. I’ve been streaming music for several years and get excited to discover new artists or sample artists that I might otherwise not invest time in. (For example, listened to Kendrick Lemar yesterday on Spotify because I think it’s important culturally to understand what’s going on there. In the old world, the only opportunity would have been for me to buy it, which would be unlikely.) But I also love how streaming gives me access to music I missed the first time around. Van Morrison’s entire back catalogue, for example, recently re-released after years of unavailability. I’m 50, so nostalgia is a strong and undeniable force, but there’s still room to be forward-looking.
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I’m aligned with you Ross with more of a leaning towards 70-80-90s. Van Morrison has such a gravitational pull, at times it feels magical…
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I guess it depends what mood I’m in. Each song creates an emotion and a memory and I love every era! Maybe you are drawn to the 70’s because you liked who you were then? Just thinking out loud…..
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LAUGHING. That froze my in my tracks.
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too many sweets will give you a stomachache. as my nana used to say.
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Your Nana, a smart woman…
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Just listened to Marvin Gaye’s Mercy, Mercy Me, on You tube…enjoying some Van Morrison “Into the Mystic” which seems so fitting since night has descended and having sat in the screened porch, earlier with much wind blowing through…blowing along the river and up through the ancient Oaks, Maples and Ash to hillside of Firs with boughs swaying…Just like being in a treehouse, perched up in the tree canopy… this cabin is a welcome retreat for several days…no cell coverage, no tv but a satellite feed on this end of the road property after several miles drive off a spur road…this old clunker of a laptop which is missing the letter “V” is a challenge to use… must go see if stars are view-able… ever so grateful for some slow time 🙂
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Beautiful Christie and wrapped with Gaye and Van Morrison, doesn’t get better than that!
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🙂
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I think my post got deleted darn this laptop
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No. It made it!
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