THE GREAT GADFLY:

Fast Food, Living Nostalgia: Humble Pie or Bitter Fruit?



I tripped the Light Fandango and I think I twisted my ankle.

I've been working toward getting used to burning music on my computer over the past few months, as opposed to making compilation CDs on a stereo component CD burner unit. I kinda miss the athleticism of hitting STOP right as a song ends, and the agony of having to throw a perfectly good CD-R away if I don't hit the target just right. And actually, I kinda enjoyed attempting to manually mix the volumes of each song, so the volume would be somewhat close to consistent. And I REALLY enjoyed having the power to just up and fade out a song if it was too long, too boring, and had made its point three guitar solos ago.

I know I can do these things on my computer, but a) I haven't figured it out yet, and b) I don't have to because the computer does it for me now.

When I was a kid, I either wanted to be a DJ or an astronaut when I grew up. When I realized being an astronaut would not involve caring for my own pet robot, but rather would involve large amounts of physics and obtuse math, I narrowed it down to just wanting to be Johnny Fever when I grew up. A big part of the attraction was being that crazy, wacky voice that kept people company in the middle of the night, but the even bigger attraction was the simple joy of listening to music and piecing songs in a succession that sounds good together.

One time I made a compilation on my crappy cassette boom box for a friend, and he said "the songs were good, but if you leave more than three seconds of space between songs, it's considered dead air." I WAS MORTIFIED. But what did he want for free? The bastard.

I was finally introduced to the joy of the mixing board at the same time I was introduced to my first CD burner, courtesy of a roommate in Williamsburg who moonlighted as an honest-to-gosh DJ at a Manhattan leather bar. I didn't get too proficient at mixing, though I piddled with it enough to know I really liked it. There's a physical rush to fusing two songs together in a way that make them sound as if they were meant to be together. I'm sure there are technical ways to do this successfully, but I'm not so sure I want to pop my outsider-hobbyist cherry. There's a charm to the occasional crappy transition, it's un-smug.

This may be why my mixologist name is DJ Short Bus.

But anyway, I haven't touched my stereo CD burner in ages. It's hooked up kind of wacky in my apartment: the speakers are in the bathroom, and one of the CD ports is broken so if I want to burn a CD, I have to hook the burner up to my DVD player. Then I have to stick a piece of freshly chewed gum on my TV antenna, stand on one leg, and ululate loudly while tapping my stereo receiver, to get the set-up to work correctly. You can understand why I may have decided to migrate to a different way of doing things.

While the physical gratification of actually hearing the music as you put a compilation may be compromised by the ease of just clicking a few buttons, I'm finding that there are new benefits to the way I've been piecing music together over the past few months. For example, I've been working on a compilation CD for the past coupla months, which started out with a couple of ideas...then I added some soundbytes to it...then I got a couple more ideas...and it seems to be turning into a work-in-progress. I've sent the thing to three people so far, and each version is different...maybe a little inspired by the person I'm going to send the comp to next, maybe a little sillier or less silly, whatev. It's an interesting new approach to linear thought to me, as my usual philosophy is: when it's done, start over again from zero.

I read an column by Joel whatshisface in Entertainment Weakly a while back, in which he suggested that mix tapes and compilation CDs are masturbatory wastes of time which only benefit the person who put the mix together, because the listener could care less. Wotta sourpuss. I couldn't agree less. In fact, the guy may want to consider kissing my faggot ass. This chick alone has introduced me to more cool shit in the past six months with her mixey treats than I've discovered from MTV in the last five years. Holy crap, this one creates make believe movie soundtracks with her mix CDs. this one needs to own his own radio station NOW, dammit.

When I lived in NYC, I learned about music from what was on East Village gay bar jukeboxes. For a period of time, only the coolest of the cool, the hippest of the hip, the most five-minutes-from-now of the PoMo hit parade would be allowed in these boybar music machines. And Stevie Nicks. Of course. But there's always gotta be room for Stevie.

A few years and a buncha Gary Numan & Stereolab purchases later, I'm now getting my education from word-of-mouth and, yup, mix compilations. Chicago boy bars don't have the same kinda rawkin' kick as what I had been used to, though who knows - one day I might want schooled in the multi-layered world of hi-NRG techno music. Music Television is an oxymoron these days. Radio is being picked apart by Clear Channel vultures. It seems the only way for me to find out what's good out there is just to simply, literally ASK. It's kinda desperate measures, but by the same token, it's a lot of fun.

But I guess a guy who writes a magazine owned by AOL/Time Warner is going to razz the duplication of commercial recordings for private distribution, as it might lead to less units moved of that new Madonna album or something, particularly in the age of Kazaa and the like. Tra la la.

I don't think compilation CDs are masturbatory at all. This rant is another story, however.

All I know is, I ordered the new Annie Lennox and the new Radiohead CDs from those Amazon bastids at the beginning of the month, and they'd better be waiting for me when I get home tonight or my radiohead will explode and my steaming grey matter will fall on people's heads like a memory.


2003-10-14 - Last Haiku
2003-10-09 - Don't Cry Out Loud
2003-10-09 - Sit Down, You're Making Me Nervous
2003-10-08 - I'm Sure Miss Thing, I'm Sure
2003-10-07 - Carbonated Water, Caramel Color, Aspartame

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