I really have to stop going to record stores. Especially Listen Up! Music in Natick, MA with the best old records in the $1 section in the back. (And maybe the worst website.) I always come home with way to many.
Music is always a necessary element in the studio, and like everyone else who has a smartphone ro Alexa, you can basically listen to anything you want at any time. However, I’m also nostalgic, so I like music in every format, and so depending on where I’m working, I have different music. In my workshop here in Holliston, MA, it has always been Boston classic rock station WZLX @ 100.7 FM, which more or less plays the same 100 songs in rotation from Crazy Train to Sweet Home Alabama. (Not really, and luckily “classic rock” now includes Pearl Jam and REM, but it often seems like whenever I turn on the radio Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd is playing, which is alright with me...) The sound comes from an old double cassette player I found with the station set and taped into place. The randomness of songs that come up and the loudness is perfect for the band saw and sledgehammer.
Speaking of random, I always stop by Listen Up! Music in Natick, MA to pick up an assortment of vinyl records to play on my record players (yes, plural) one for the basement I found on the side of the road with double cassette and 3-disc changer, and one I recently found at Music-Go-Round in Natick where I have bought more musical instruments than is normal. This turntable is battery/USB powered portable record player like the old Close’n Play of my youth. I never gave up my old records so will play them in the basement when I’m painting (or one of the many cassettes or CD’s which I still have) But this new portable can sit on my kitchen table and I can play some sappy Windham Hill records at 4:00 am or some K-Tel classics after dinner.
Alexa is taking over some of the musical responsibilities within wifi distance, but I still like the random selections from playing stations on Pandora (which my students continue to laugh at as some ancient technological relic.) However just play the Morphine station and tell me you won’t be productive. (Note: not to be played in the wee hours of the morning without headphones, or in front of the children.)
I’m warming up to Spotify, choice of my students because they like to curate their every waking moment with those white things stuck in their ears. It is is nice to just play Jethro Tull’s Songs from the Wood at a moment’s notice, especially if you left the record at home. However, in my classroom as well I have the history of audio (from 78’s to Alexa) and they are always most fascinated by the ol’ vinyl…
This image of the Pianista Mallard King wouldn’t even be possible if it weren’t for the following artists: Tom Waits, Mark Sandman, The Butchers and the Builders, Brown Bird, Ray LaMontagne, and Will Ackerman.
I don’t suggest living with walking around with earbuds in (listening to the world is much better) but having REM’s Reckoner cranking on the way to the hardware store, or listening late at night to my hand-recorded double cassette of Sufjan Steven’s Come On Feel the Illinoise and the soundtrack to Oh Brother Where Art Thou? life could not get any better. No matter what the generation, music is awesome. As I said to my colleague David Coleman, a kind of musical superhero, that in a fist fight between music and art, music will always win.