In Defense of Luddites

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

There are three problems with the move toward downloading music from places like iTunes:

1) Sound quality (it’s not as good as CDs, but CDs aren’t that great either).

2) No more friendly exchanges with the guy at the record store. Admittedly, those kinds of exchanges are generally a thing of the past. The big record stores in New York City are hostile to all forms of friendliness. Going to one of the Virgin stores, for example, must be the least pleasant way to buy anything from anyone. On the flipside, though, there are places like Ampersound, in Saranac Lake, where the owner, Mark Coleman, became a great friend—so much so that a couple times I even let him beat me at Risk. But if I hadn’t bought CDs from him, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to know him, which would be my loss.

3) Liner notes. Yes, sometimes albums from iTunes include a pdf of the liner notes, but usually not. The problem with that is you don’t get to see who played what on which tracks. And while you may not care about where the tracks were mastered, the guy who did the mastering does, and liner notes serve as credits. Most importantly, liner notes, the good ones, anyway, add to your understanding of the artist. The notes to Norman Blake’s album “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” for example, were written by his wife and point out when he used a flatpick, fingerpicks or just his fingernails. They also tell you what kind of boots he was wearing during the recording. Guns n’ Roses, in the notes to their “Use Your Illusion” records, included a “Fuck you, St. Louis,” as a way of thanking the fans in that city for rioting after the band walked out on a show. See? You learn a lot about band by reading its liner notes. Download those albums from iTunes and you’ll have no idea what Norman’s got on his feet or why Slash and Axl don’t like the Cardinals.

On the other hand, it seems silly to have all that plastic lying around and taking up space on shelves. Speaking of shelves, what are people going to do with their shelves in a few years when everyone’s listening to music and reading books they downloaded onto their iPods and Kindles?

(Computer-smashing duck image "borrowed" from somewhere on the Internet.)