After a long and possibly unhealthy relationship with iTunes ended – or at least started it’s long decline – this fall, I am caught reflecting on how my music consumption has changed over the years. It’s an interesting journey. I typically think of my musical evolution along the axis of my musical taste. And while the changes in my consumption take cues from taste, they are just as influenced by technology, income, and everything else happening in my life.
The Department Store Cassette Aisle
My earliest memory of engaging with music is in the department store. I was early Elementary aged and MTV was a primary source of inspiration. Europe, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, and others offered a quick shot of adrenaline. It’s not completely clear to me why this was the music I loved at the time – but this was definitely what I sought.
As an Elementary-aged kid in the 1980s, there was nothing which I look back and see as evidence of an undying love for listening to music. Other curiosities demanded more of my limited allowance and gift monies (e.g., Nintendo.) I was not inspired to make music. Rather, every odd trip to the local K-Mart, Target, or Wal-Mart would find me wandering to the cassette aisles to find a familiar rock album and convince my mother to let me use my allowance.
The first cassette tape I remember purchasing with my own money was Europe’s The Final Countdown released in May of 1986.
I did develop one trait at this time that has carried on through today: an interest in the album over the hits. When I chose to listen to music on my own time, I was typically in my room, listening one of my tapes rather than the radio, and devoting my full attention to the cassette player. Each song on the album carried equal weight and I felt it was my duty to give attention to all of them. I’m not sure why I did this. Did I just think “this is how you are supposed to listen to a tape?”
Mall Rats: Camelot, Musicland, Sam Goody
I’m not sure exactly when or why – it was probably heavily influenced by my big sister and MTV, alike – but this more passive participation in music transitioned to an active identity-seeking in middle school. I’d like to say that my forays into hip hop, alternative music, and metal started with some noble quest for identity and truth in art. Candidly, I think I was just an angry young man. I participated in any statements as witness – I was only there for the f-words, snarls, and shouted anthems.
This phase roughly coincided with my purchase of a CD player and therefore my first CD purchases: Soundgarden, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and N.W.A. At this time I was also starting to seek out the purchase of music. Friends and I would go to the mall and make sure we hit the 2 music stores. We’d flip through the CDs (as if they changed over frequently) and the t-shirts.
Apart from the increasing percentage of my allowance allocated to music, this period also saw me start to make mix tapes (err, “playlists” for the kidz.) It was so easy to dub music from a CD to a tape and it wouldn’t be until much later that I would get a portable CD player.
Fort Worth, Y’all: CDx and The Engine Room
Later in middle school and throughout high school it seemed that music pushed past other interests and would become my chosen “identity.” I devoted an ever-increasing share of my income to music, starting choosing my friends based on their musical tastes, and transitioned my wardrobe to almost only band shirts. I had plenty of other hobbies and commitments pulling at me – I played a few sports, skateboarded, was decent at school, and worked 20-40 hours a week after turning 16 – but it was music that I chose as my “face” to the world. I am probably still the only player for my high school baseball program who has ever worn Morbid Angel t-shirts to practice.
The evolution of my musical tastes in this time period is probably less of the story. I continued to seek angry music, going a little deeper into genres. NIN became Ministry which became Godflesh. The Ramones became Exploited which became Crass. Megadeth became Sepultura which became Carcass. And so on and so forth.
Despite how obsessively focused on the music I was in middle/high school, it wasn’t the interesting evolution. The real story was how I was consuming and interacting with music. I purchased a guitar and played in a few bands. I started attending shows – and got hooked. And it was at these shows that I began to purchase and listen to records.
The first show I attended was at a bar in Nashville when I was 14. My best friend and I were visiting his aunt and she convinced the staff to let us in to see Valentine Saloon. They played some grunge-y version of Sonic Temple worship. The music was good – but the experience of being in such a small, dark venue with the music so unbelievably loud was captivating. I spent the next 4 years going to every show I could.
When you go to shows, you buy merch – bands depend on merch sales for touring cash. And when you buy merch at shows, you look for items which you cannot get elsewhere. The t-shirt is the staple, but quickly I realized that show merch tables were a great place to find rare records (remember this was pre-internet.) Thus began my infatuation with records – especially the 7″ single.
Naturally, I sought local stores in DFW who sold new records. There was Bill’s in North Dallas and the various Deep Ellum stores. But there was also a weird little store in a strip mall off highway 183 named CDx. It seemed to start as a run-of-the-mill used+new CD store, but the owner/manager was a hip guy and they quickly stocked plenty of records, as well. CDx was a regular stop.
KVRX And Sound Exchange, A Quick Note
My 4 years in undergrad were a wonderful time. And while my musical horizon expanded, my music collection exploded, and I met my wife at a Sebadoh show, not a whole lot changed in my consumption of music. I bought a lot of weird records at Sound Exchange on the drag in Austin- especially 7″ singles. I saw a lot of shows (and wore a lot of band shirts.) I did trade playing music with a band for playing music on the radio at KVRX 91.7 FM. More iteration than evolution.
Al Gore, Lars Ulrich, And Steve Jobs Walk Into A Bar…
After spending three years in a professionally overworked blur, I moved to NYC in mid-2003. This catalyzed a sea change in my relationship with recorded music. First, my listening radically changed from a largely physical experience in Texas (records at home, CDs at work, cassettes in the car) to a largely digital experience in NYC. In a world of city streets, subways, and graduate school classrooms, I needed my music mobile. You might recall this change in needs also corresponds neatly with a consumer device which was on its 3rd generation and a file sharing community which had long left Napster behind.
La Hora Del Burro 