BELLEVILLE, Illinois — When I was a teenager in the early-1990s, my stepfather introduced me to classic rock, and I never looked back. The bands on the first cassette tapes I had ever bought — M.C. Hammer and the New Kids on the Block — could not hold a musical candle to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
To this day, I still believe that the best popular music ever made was produced from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. (The late 1980s and early 1990s — which gave the world bands including the Pixies, Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Pearl Jam — are a close second.) Although I hate what the Baby Boomer generation has done to society through feminism, free love, and the current economy, they did give us good music.
Does anyone think that Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, or Justin Bieber will be remembered in thirty years as the Beatles are now? So, when I read this humorous BBC article on a teenager giving up his iPod for a Walkman, it brought me back fifteen years because I went through a technological change myself that brings up the issue of quality versus convenience.
I really did not want to by a CD player and compact discs in the early 1990s. I liked my records and cassette tapes.
When I was a teenager, my favorite band was the Moody Blues. The swirling, orchestral sound of the mellotron, the collective three-part harmonies of the vocals, and the lyrics that were vague, emotional, and mystical enough to apply to anyone’s life at any time all spoke to a teenager who was going through the moody, hormone-driven troubles that are universal to all young adults.
I owned the records for the first seven of the Moody Blues’ albums from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. I would put the records on my stereo and look at the album artwork all the time. Best of all, each album was an entire piece of artwork unto itself. Many “concept albums” of progressive-rock bands at the time were devoted to a single, particular theme — unlike today, when singles are more popular than albums since people put collections of their favorite, individual songs onto their iPods.
My favorite album, “To Our Children’s Children’s Children” (1969), was devoted to space travel and what the future may hold for humanity. The album jacket contained photos of the band, lyrics, a drawing of the band in a prehistoric cave, and other items. The music was just one part of the total experience. In addition, each song blended and transitioned into the next one to create a unified experience and work of art. Today, an album is merely a collection of unrelated, individual songs — and the artistry has declined.
Here is a video of my favorite song, “Question,” from “A Question of Balance” (1970) during an undated concert (probably in the 1980s) with a new keyboardist who had replaced founding member Mike Pinder and his mellotron:
The musical transitions were the reason that I did not want to replace my cassette tapes with CDs. I had thought, erroneously, that the setting of track markers on a compact disc would interrupt the transitions between songs. (Of course, I was wrong.)
Eventually, I did move to CDs — but the quality was never the same. Although I have no research to support this theory, my stepfather — whose sense of hearing has always been far better than mine — said that compact discs cut out the extreme treble and bass ends of the spectrum because of “compression” (or something). It seems to be true — the compact discs had always seemed worse than records or cassette tapes (especially compared to listening to records on my gigantic headphones that eliminated outside noise).
Still, my unrealized fears about CDs came true when I eventually went digital. (I had purchased a generic brand of an iPod at Duty Free in Tel Aviv — why pay more for a brand name?) I downloaded all of my favorite albums from the CDs to the digital-music player and then recoiled when the Moody Blues albums were not “whole.” There was a blank pause between songs when the device searched for the new track. It killed the experience. Moreover, it seems that digital files downplay the bass because the small earpieces cannot handle the sound.
To get an idea of the full sound, here is “The Voice” (1981) — another of my favorite songs by the Moodies from the album “Long Distance Voyager”:
And “I’m Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band)” from the 1972 album “Seventh Sojourn”:
The evolution from records to cassette tapes to compact discs to digital files may have made listening to music much more convenient, but it has harmed the audiophile’s ability to appreciate the full sound. And a generation of young people — like the teenager in the BBC article — will likely never hear quality playback. Regardless of which bands they like.
