Friday Arts

For music fans, there's this whole recent paradigm shift to streaming, which for folks of my generation, is about the thousandth shift we've had to go through. We remember little transistor radios playing top ten songs over and over and over. We remember collecting 45s and stacking them on our little GE record players until there were so many they wouldn't play anymore and just sort of warbled as the needle traversed hill and dale. We remember when LPs came along with more than just a hit or two and endless filler, for sale at $2.99 at E.J. Korvettes (which was not short for Eight Jewish Korean War Veterans). By the time I graduated college I had a LOT of boxes of albums, many acquired while working at a small record shop. We remember when FM radio started playing decent music without a lot of ads (or, as the Dan would put it, with no static at all). We remember when cassettes came along, and more importantly, Sony Walkmen. As a word person, I remember that it was never really Sony Walkmans. We remember CDs, and replacing virtually all our LPs with disks. We remember iPods and MP3s, and ripping virtually all of our CDs. By the time MP3s, came along I had a LOT of shelves of CDs, most of them acquired at Tower records. Now that Spotify and Bluetooth have settled in (after fits and starts like Limewire and the like), I feel as if it's the last time I'll have to think about any of this.

I live on Spotify. It follows me everywhere, and almost never lets me down if I'm looking for a particular song. There's plenty of good playlists, although I have created some of my own. One, which I call Menick's Tab Room, (spotify:user:jimmenick:playlist:1CzrLTz52lXBVAGs4GNG1p), has nearly 2000 songs that I've been putting together for a couple of years now. Mostly rock, mostly lively; most people who wander into tab seem to like it. I'm constantly adding to it, and occasionally subtracting from it. Feel free to check it out.

Now that I'm back blogging, I plan to write mostly debate stuff Monday through Thursday, and other stuff, like this, on Friday. Here's the most interesting part:

Songs added to Menick's Tab Room playlist in the last 7 days:
3 cuts from Ghost in the Machine, the Police — after a bit of arguing with my daughter, who detests the group
Takin' Care of Business, BTO — I was never a fan, probably because they came along in '73 which began a long period for me of listening to anything but rock
3 cuts from American Fool, John Mellencamp — same as BTO
Radar Love, Golden Earring — I was reminded of this when they played a clip on Agents of Shield. This group has apparently been around since 1969 but I know nothing about them other than this song. Does anybody?
2 cuts from New Riders of the Purple Sage, their first album — What would you call them back then? The flip side of the Dead?
I could find no songs to add from George Harrison's Extra Texture album, which I also audited this week.

TTFN.