Record Sampling

I've heard a lot of stories about how brick-and-mortar record stores are in trouble from not only Internet sales of compact discs but also computer downloads. I usually paid these gloom-and-doom reports no heed, because I figured that there were enough people who enjoyed the thrill of looking in record stores and finding that forgotten album they'd meant to buy years before, or perhaps finding an album they'd only heard of and never heard anything from and taking a chance on it, or just getting something out of the blue through serendipitous browsing. Now I may have to rethink my position.

A few weeks ago I visited Rush's MySpace site and listened to their second album, Fly By Night, in its entirety, and I enjoyed it despite the fact that it got only one out of five stars from the second edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide. (And the reviewer was a rare critic that liked Rush!) It suddenly dawned on me that I had heard an entire long player, with the songs sequenced properly, on my computer without having paid a cent for it - and I can listen to those tracks again and again if I so desire.

This called into question all of the albums I have bought on CD in the past twenty years. I have over a hundred of them, but I haven't listened to some of them in ages. Although I enjoy having the Clash's London Calling or Creedence Clearwater Revival's Pendulum at my fingertips whenever I am ready to hear them again, it seems far more economical to go to an artiste's social networking page and listen to the whole damn album without buying it and without having to find space for it. My PC has freed me of ever having to buy a CD again!

However, I'll still buy them, though, because CDs offer two advantages that computers don't. First, you don't have to boot up your PC just to listen to a record. Secondly, physical, tangible audio recordings - even CDs, with their precious little booklets - offer more enjoyment with their artwork and liner notes than just listening to the same tracks on a PC. And compact discs offer bonus tracks - especially essential for LPs from British acts from the sixties and seventies who kept singles and albums separate and had no idea that future recording formats would be long play only. I discovered Family's singles, among them the most essential of their work, through the magic of bonus tracks. Indeed, there's something magical about a recording you can hold in your hand that will last for years, while a recording on your computer is just electronic code that can get wiped out.

Actually, I'm glad I heard Rush's Fly By Night on the computer first, because it gave me the opportunity to give it a test run and see if I liked it. So, having liked it in spite of the aforementioned bad rating it got, I now hope to buy it on CD - and find something else while in the store or even at Amazon.com - and appreciate it all the more on my CD player, where all I have to do is just load and press play.

And without a computer to tend to, I'll have the freedom to play air guitar to Alex Lifeson's solos. :-D