A busy summer ago I decided to upload my entire album
collection on to a separate hard drive along with copies of alphabetized USB
cartridges for mobility. There was steady progression but with society’s
normalcies and personal routines (work and working out) taking precedence most
of the time, I couldn’t give the project the desired amount of attention. It
wasn’t just about uploading the albums; also cataloging them and organizing
them alphabetically and by year of release. That was a personal preference;
most people would have settled for just the upload – I wanted to admire the
history of the music.
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| Fates Warning - Awaken the Guardian |
For the longest time, my love for music fleeted away. It
went from a mood enhancer to busy noise I used to fade out all the stupid in
life. It doesn’t help that all new musical acts in 2015 are ravaged, overproduced
trash with auto-tune being the king breeder of the idiotic and famous. As a
young boy during the 1980’s, listening to the radio in the car as my mother
drove to drop me off at elementary school is a special time for me. Belinda
Carlisle told me I lived in Heaven and WHAM whispered carelessly – I didn’t
know that a few hundred miles away a psycho was becoming a murderer after being
inspired by that same song - pop music was fantastic. But I stopped listening
to public radio during the late 90’s aside from a rock radio station that
played heavier material after ten o’clock at night, but eventually I grew out
of that as well. I didn’t stop listening to radio because the pop charts were
filled with recycled sonic sewage, but because I was completely enamored by the
stuff I was hearing underground. As a teenager in high school I started
expanding my horizons. I was definitely a rock ‘n roll/heavy metal guy, but my
love for hip hop (especially the New York style) exploded as did my
appreciation of classical and jazz from Handel's "Messiah" to John Pattitucci's smooth, bass-oriented jazz trio. The world was full of amazing musicians and
writers, thinking about it now, it’s hard to remember how I found so many of
the bands that I did before the internet’s uprising and eventual destruction of
the music industry. The typical way was through music magazines and special
ordered catalogs from different record labels. Metal Edge magazine and it’s
cousin Metal Maniacs were a monthly acquirement. I spent countless hours reading
descriptions of all of the bands, looking for guest appearances from familiar
names or checking who produced the album. The majority of the time I picked a
band based solely on the album’s cover. If it was cool, I bought it.
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| Jon Pattitucci |
Whenever on road trips, whether with family, friends, or
school, it was mandatory to hit any and all used book and used record stores. I
never had time to engulf the culture of the record store world because I was always
on the clock and the hunt was always calling. Plus, I think the fast pace kept
me from associating with hipsters. I am forever grateful. But, while in the
store, I would flip through every single cd and vinyl they had in that place –
yes – every – single – one; the same went for books. I always had a list of specific
items in hand but there were always pleasant surprises along the way. The
bargain bins were my diamonds in the rough.
The coolest part about the whole experience was that you met
like-minded people. The best friends I had back in high school and the best
friends I have today, I can truly say that music brought us all together and our
personalities just clicked. The same for
total strangers that I would meet just hanging out at parties or on the beach –
they would hear the jams I was playing and freak out, “Hey! You like that band
too? I thought I was the only one.” Bands like Zebrahead that rarely tour
America despite being from southern California – it took me over ten years to
find another person that had heard of them on their own and not from me or a
friend of mine.
Nearly a year after I uploaded my first album on to the hard
drive, I was back on vacation and finally had the appropriate time to dive
fully into the logging process. It took my whole vacation and then some, but
I’m finally at the tail end of the project and it hasn’t been just a work in
progress; I’ve been time traveling through music and memories. Buying albums in
music stores was so much more fulfilling than simply typing it on to your
search engine and clicking a button to buy and download it. The thrill of the
hunt was far more excitable sometimes than the actual purchasing of the album,
and occasionally even more intense than the actual music on the album. All
radio is pretty much dead to me now, both traditional and internet – it’s all
the same junk on a preset loop – the same songs played in the same order time
after time. I miss the hunt. I miss the catalogues. But I am loving my music
again, and it’s available to me any time
I want. I am loving it all over again.
