Let’s face it, kids, iPods are “cool.” I know this for several reasons: (a) It sometimes seems like every fifth person on the street is wearing one (the ratio increases the closer you get to a college), (b) when I put “iPods are cool” into Google, I get 1,650,000 search results, mostly trying to sell me “cool” Pod accessories, and (c) I don’t own one.
Though I’d wager that I adore music 100 percent more than 90 percent of those addicted to their headphones, I haven’t become a Pod person for manifold reasons. For one, I have a mild “sticking things in my ear” phobia.
I’m also convinced that music doesn’t sound very good coming out of a computer. I know the Pod isn’t really like listening to music on a computer’s tinny, nickel-sized “speakers,” but the computer is always the distribution center, and I don’t trust ’em. Put it this way: I don’t like the idea of sticking my head down and drinking directly out of the Ohio River, and even if you put it in an awesomely cool drinking goblet (maybe like the one Li’l Jon has) I’m still not opening my mouth to it.
Sure, my conviction that music coming out of computer sounds bad has absolutely no basis in scientific fact or reality as far as I know. But I work all day on a computer — it’s not really where I want to go on my off-time.
So I just convince myself of some made-up hypothesis about the sound being compressed when it’s sucked through the cable wires and regurgitated out into an iPod.
It’s silly, I know, but we all have our quirks, and it beats going up to a bell tower with a shotgun or becoming a Republican or something really crazy.
The last reason I don’t have an iPod — besides the fact that as an alternative weekly guy I don’t exactly have a lot of leeway in the “disposable income” department — is perhaps equally as far-fetched: The shattering of “music” like it’s a giant chandelier crashing 30 feet to the concrete and splintering into a bazillion slivers just seems belittling.
The lessening value of music comes in those shrinking, rearrangable song files you tear from the Internet and load into your Pod. You have 2,400 songs in a little box you put in your pocket, and you put them on random so you feel like you’re listening to a radio station you’ve programmed yourself.
That’s wonderful. But I want to “open” a record. I want to hold it, see it, even smell it. I might sound like the vinyl geeks did when CDs became king, but, like Sinead O’Connor ripping up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live to protest the church’s blind-eye approach to priestly child abuse, they were right.
Screaming for more purity in something as corrupt and infuriating as music, however, is like bitching about the old days when ketchup came in a glass bottle! So since I can’t beat them, I’ll pander to them.
Because I work on a Mac, I do utilize iTunes (hypocrite!) and have had fun just randomly scouring the online store for interesting, weird or funny digital files — er, I mean songs. I’ve even made a few mix CDs from songs pulled off of the iTunes store for fun. Hey, maybe I should try this Podding thing.
I certainly like local original music a lot, and I’d love to encourage people to listen to more of it. So fire up the pornbox, go to the iTunes store (I swear I’m not lobbying for a free iPod or one of those groovy new iPod phones or a brand new Dual 2.7Ghz G5 Power Mac; it’s just all I know) and pull down these local artists’ tracks for the “Best Local Music iPod Mix Playlist Limited to Artists Who Have Their Songs Uploaded and on Sale at the iTunes Store.” Ever!
This is the recommended order. But we both know you’ll just put it on shuffle anyway, you ear-piece-wearing bastard.
Big Joe Duskin: “Cincinnati Stomp”
Kim Taylor: “What Do You Say”
Freekbass: “Knock the Walls Down”
Promenade: “The Grab”
The Wolverton Brothers: “Red Falls”
Chris Arduser: “Roscoe”
CzarNok: “G.A.M.E.”
Jake Speed and the Freddies: “Leavin’ Cincinnati”
Over the Rhine: “Born”
Buckra: “Shake Your Baby Fat”
Bootsy Collins: “Bootzilla”
Moonlight Graham: “Juice”
Moth: “I Want It All”
The Ass Ponys: “Swallow You Down”
Five Deez: “Four Black Dudes”
Ray’s Music Exchange: “Synchrocosmic”
Culture Queer: “Baby”
H-Bomb Ferguson: “Bookie’s Blues”
The Afghan Whigs: “I Know Your Little Secret”
Hi Tek: “The Sun God” (featuring Common)
Hungry Lucy: “Shine”
Elliott Ruther: “Rock-N-Roll Conceived (in Cincinnati)”
The Animal Crackers: “Schwicky”
Dallas Moore: “Put Me Through Hell”
Pain Link: “When Sand Turns to Glass”
The Spectacular Fantastic: “Just My Luck”
Iswhat?!: “Trust”
Staggering Statistics: “Shadow of the Axe”
Fizzgig: “Sympathy”
Heartless Bastards: “Gray”
Len’s Lounge: “Green”
The Greenhornes: “There Is an End” (With Holly Golightly)
Thee Shams: “Come Down Again”
Croatan: “Four Letter Word for Hypocrite”
The Stapletons: “Pulse (Love Is Gonna Come)”
The Sundresses: “I Get All the Pussy”
Peter Adams: “The Disappeared”
The Tigerlilies: “Beautiful One”
500 Miles to Memphis: “Nother Year Down the Toilet”
Phil DeGreg: “We Kiss in a Shadow”
Bottom Line: “Nothing Is Real (As If It Ever Was)”
Pearlene: “Free to Be On Your Knees”
Ruby Vileos: “Let’s Go”
This article appears in Sep 14-20, 2005.