The number one song in the land on November 3, 1956, was
Elvis Presley’s recording of Love Me
Tender. It was the very first 45 rpm record I ever owned; my mother
bought it and gave it to me and my brother. I still have it, along with 839 other 45s.
The last recording I bought was Pat Metheny’s The Orchestrion Project. An orchestrion,
should you not know, is a mechanical instrument designed to imitate the sound
of an orchestra. Metheny has been fascinated for years with creating a wall of
sound, to borrow a phrase, with him as the only live musician. I saw him
perform music from this album in Waterbury last year. It was quite amazing.
When I say “last recording,” I mean last as in “the most
recent” but I also mean it in the sense of “the last one, never to be
repeated.” It’s very likely that the Methany CD will remain the last CD I ever
buy; furthermore, it may well be the last time I ever pay money to own music.
For the last ten years or so most of the music I have bought
I have downloaded from iTunes, eMusic or amazon, though I have in fact purchased a few
physical CDs. I think those days are over. I have canceled my subscription to
eMusic and I have no plans to buy music online.
At 64 I have realized enough is enough. I don’t need to own
any more music. From now on when I want to hear something I don’t have, I will
listen to it via Spotify – and of course there are other choices too: Pandora
and Rdio to name just two. Right now I have only the free version of Spotify; I
am still trying to decide whether it’s worth $10 a month to eliminate the ads
and have more complete mobile access to their vast catalog.
This is a seismic shift for me. For 57 years I have been
buying recorded music in one format or another: 45s, LPs, cassette tapes,
compact discs and downloads. No more.
Now, does anyone want to buy the 3,600 CDs on our shelves?
I still remember when we were burglarized in 1994 or so and when I told the Police that 300 odd CD's had been stolen, they questioned me closely on that. My insurance never paid off on it, because I did not have a complete list of my titles, what I paid for them and receipts. Please take a video of all your CD's, in case something happens, so YOUR insurance won't decide you are trying to defraud them!
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