Thursday, October 26, 2006

Gutenberg's jukebox


One of the benefits of having access to the internet is that I can now find the kind of music I love, the songs and albums that i grew up with, Whether it be through ripped cds, internet radio stations such as Last FM or other services such as Limewire I now have access to a huge range of music that was unavailable beforehand. When I was a students in the 80's I was the proud owner of over 200 albums. The other guys I shared the house with were equally avid music fans so between us we probably had close to a 1000 albums that reflected our rather eclectic listening tastes.

The monetary value of those collections was enormous, representing thousands of pounds (not to mention thousands of lost hours spent rummaging in the bargain bins of various record shops). Now I have more music that that stored on a device that fits neatly into my pocket. More importantly, I didn't have to sell my soul or work for the next 60 years to pay for them.

So that's where Gutenberg comes into the equation; before the advent of the printing press books were expensive commodities, owning one was equivalent to owning a laptop in todays terms. Then within a 100 years they came an affordable luxury and then an everyday commodity. The same has happened to music, but instead of taking centuries it has taken a mere decade.

So this is my blast from the past that is rocking my world.

Laibach - Life is Life
Bad Brains - I against I
Big Black - Jordan
The jam - Going Underground
The Waterboys - The Return of Jimi Hendrix
Public Enemy - Don't Believe the Hype
Conflict - The Ungovernable Force
The Left Banke - Pretty Ballerina
The Smashing Pumpkins - Today
Walk on By - Isaac Hayes

No comments: