To the Editor:
“In
Mobile Age, Sound Quality Steps Back” (Business Day, May 10), about
the degradation of sound quality in the MP3 era, touches on a central
concern for musicians like me, who feel that a song’s chief virtue
should not be its ease of portability. There is an art to listening to
music, and the move to jukebox-style delivery of songs in MP3 form has
largely compromised that art for a generation of fans.
I remember listening to music on vinyl, poring over the sleeve, looking
at the lyric sheet, even following the needle across the record.
There was something in that magical, romantic, tactile relationship with
the album that has been lost by the reduction of music to content.
Music is not software; music is art. But I’ve been encouraged by the
growing revolt against that iPod culture and playlist mentality.
Kids at shows come up to me to have me sign their vinyl.
They want to feel as if they’re buying into something they can cherish
and feel a part of. And you simply can’t do that downloading a few
files.
Steven Wilson
London, May 11, 2010
The writer is a producer and musician with the band Porcupine Tree.
Note from KBJ: This is hilarious. I've never owned a vinyl record in my life. (Okay, maybe one; it melted after being left in a car.) I can't even imagine a more ridiculous technology. I'm not against albums. Just as a book is more than a collection of articles, an album is more than a collection of songs. (Don't believe me? Listen to Quadrophenia [1973].) But vinyl records? The sooner this Earth is rid of them, the better.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 