Music and How We Listen
By Jack Dallas
While music, with its seemingly endless styles and genres
has certainly evolved over the centuries, the actual way we listen to that
music has also changed. During a recent
evening cocktail hour, that lasted beyond its scheduled period, I came to
realize not only how much I appreciated the music of my time but also how I am
able to listen to my favorites. In my
seven decades of enjoying music, no time has been quite as enjoyable as the
present. The reason for that analysis
can be understood by a brief look back.
My formative years offered some limited access to
music via the tabletop radio in the living room and a small child’s record
player that spun seven-inch platters at 78 revolutions per minute. The quality was marginal but it was all we
knew. Eventually cars had radios so the
family’s four-hour trips to Key West from Miami were filled with music and
radio shows. For my younger audience, radio
shows were like television but without the pictures.
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| Push-button AM Car Radio |
By the time I entered high school the transistor had been
invented and placed inside a plastic box about the size of a deck of
cards. This revolutionary device was the
portable AM radio whose main function seemed to be to deliver scratchy music
through a single earpiece or a small front speaker and gobble 9-volt lead acid batteries like they were Jujubes. While the sound quality sucked, we loved these little guys. A day at the beach was not the same when your battery died.
We could listen to both WQAM 560 and
WFUN 790 where “our kind of music” was played.
If you were really lucky and the radio gods were kind, you could even get
WABC 770 out of New York. This was only
late at night when the ionosphere bounced the signal back to earth just so we
could listen to Cousin Brucie (Bruce Morrow).
We also had Bob Smith, “The Wolfman” aka “Wolfman Jack” (no relation), who
broadcast from XERF 1570. This was a 250,000 watt “border-blaster” station located in Acuña, Mexico that could be heard nationwide, if you were lucky.
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| Bob Smith, aka Wolfman Jack |
During this same period, long playing (LP) records came out
along with the big-holed 45’s. These were
played on record players or, drum roll here, the hi-fi. This latter term stood for high fidelity to
indicate that before its invention we were listening to crap. Who knew?
This so-called hi-fi was generally a large piece of furniture with a
combination AM-FM radio tuner and a turntable to play your 78’s, 33 1/3’s and
45’s. Yes, FM radio eased in here to
finally provide better quality music. The
hi-fi had stereo speakers and an amplifier to finally fill a room with music.
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| Console Hi-Fi Stereo |
The automobile also evolved with various music delivery
systems. In addition to the AM radio in
the dash, we also had a series of tape-based systems, which we bolted under the
dash and wired to new speakers we put in the front doors and rear window decks. I have personally installed 4-track players,
8-track players, and cassette players in my vehicles over the years.
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| You haven't lived until you've "fixed" one of these. |
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| Bolt under your dash, wire your speakers, enjoy |
This also meant that the music industry made money by
selling me the same song I originally purchased on a 45-RPM record on each
iteration of delivery platforms. I bought
it on the 45, on the compilation LP, 4-track cassette, 8-track cassette,
compact cassette, and eventually on a CD.
I could have literally paid for that song six times. Seven times if you consider my reel-to-reel
tape player. However, truth be told, I
never purchased music on reel-to-reel tapes.
I only recorded music on my reel tapes, or stole it to use the RIAA term.
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| This is not a Compact Disc |
Yes, if you noticed carefully in the above paragraph, I
slipped in the CD or compact disc. The
CD finally provided music without the usual hiss and pops we had grown to know
and love. Some audiophiles currently
still seem to think that tube amplifiers and vinyl discs provide better sound
than the more sterile output of a compact disc.
I must be missing something here; perhaps it’s the hiss and pops.
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| Lots of CDs |
The CD has enjoyed a long run now and this presents me with my
current dilemma; what to do with the boxes and boxes of CD’s. I no longer listen to CD’s, not directly
anyway. I have long since ripped them to
MP3 files where I can move them anywhere I want. I can play them while listening on my
computer. I can stream them to my family
room entertainment center. I can put
them on a thumb drive that I can play on either of the two amplifiers I have
that play in the two seating areas of my backyard. I can play the thumbdrive in my car. I can load them on my smartphone to stream
wirelessly to my Bluetooth headphones and speakers. I can upload them to the Amazon Cloud to play
virtually anywhere with Internet access.
The music delivery options seem endless.
I now rent my music as part of my Amazon Prime membership, Spotify
membership, and DirecTv subscription.
This brings us to my recent cocktail “hour” with my wife,
Sue. We sat in our kitchen/family room at
our bar/island where we literally asked our “friend” Alexa to play any artist
or song we could think of. Alexa played “every song that driver knew.” You see Alexa lives in a small tower on a
shelf between our kitchen and family room.
She awaits our every command.
Just speak, “Alexa, play Barry White.”
Within seconds you are hearing “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe”,
streaming from Alexa’s speakers. Her
music library exceeds 30 million songs. She
links to my Spotify library, which also has over 30 million songs. I’ll assume there are a few duplicates in
those two sources. If songs average 3 minutes
it would take me over 170 years to listen to them all, or 130 years if we
eliminate Rap, Punk, Hip hop, Techno and Electronica. Even at 130 years, that’s a very long
cocktail hour. I might need to make
another run to Total Wine and Spirits to restock.
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| Amazon Echo, the home of Alexa |
Yes, we love our Amazon Echo and the young lady, Alexa who
resides therein. She understands
us. It still amazes me how far we’ve
come in the way we now listen to music. I
still remember a time when it wasn’t so easy.
