Friday, February 10, 2006

Ipod Shuffle

William Bowers at Pitchfork has a great piece about the Ipod's impact on his life. Here's a taste:

Listening to an album from start to finish begins to seem peculiar, or redundant, like something that a Dickens clerk would do at night. Whenever I actually get around to brushing the cat litter off of my record player, it's stagey and deliberate: Lookee, tee-hee, I am going to perform the quaint/archaic act of sitting in a rocking chair and listening to something in its entirety. Surely a pipe and a sweater vest are the only barriers between me and a guy who listened to FDR on one of those old, cathedral-shaped radios.

Read the whole thing.

Myself: I don't have one and probably won't be getting one for several reasons. The cost is too high for me, downloaded music doesn't sound that great, and I'm not in situations where I could make use of one much.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Man, after reading that I'm glad I don't have one. (or an all-in-one cellphone/webconnect/camera/musicdownloader). I like the album format - when done right it is like reading a book or is a slice of history. Albums have always been my timeline or touchstone for placing things in history. The Tet offensive took place the same year when the White Album came out. I bought my first house when Nevermind was released. Stuff like that. To do away with that format and just hearing mixes would make me feel 'out of time' (Crappy REM record that came out the year I got married).