$99.99

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I ended up buying a record at a Wilco show over the summer, so I needed a record player. The cheapest one I could find was this Crosley Rochester for about $100 at Target.

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It pretty much gets the job done. For only $100 you get an am/fm radio, a CD player, a tape deck, and a record player. Pretty nice. But when you try to do so much, it’s hard not to botch it in one way or another.

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The sound quality is pretty nice. It looks like there are speakers all around this thing, in the front and on the sides, and as far as I can tell, it really does. The only problem with sound quality comes in with AM radio. I listen to AM radio from time to time and when I do, it’s hit and miss. The antenna wire thing that it comes with doesn’t really deliver. KXLU is MIA on the radio, which is bummer city., but besides that, you’re pretty much set.

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Since it is a manual interface, I can’t digitally store radio stations, so when I listen to FM I have to spin to each station, looking for a good song. Luckily, I’ve all but given up on FM radio, so no big deal here.

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The CD’s work fine and listening to an LP is easy-breezy. Also, it has a MP3 jack, so that’s pretty cool, too.

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The only issue I really have with this machine is the way it plays my cassettes.

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So, the good thing about cassettes is that you can rewind and fast forward and record and stuff like that, right? Well not if you’ve got this guy. You can only play. You put the tape in, select “tape” on the format option, then it just starts playing, and it won’t stop until the tape is done on that side. You can’t fast forward through songs or rewind to hear one again.

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If you want to hear the same song twice you need to turn the tape over, listen to the other side for like…2 minutes or however long the original song was, then turn it over and listen.

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Why? How hard would it have been to add these functions? How can you even call this a tape deck? It’s like buying a car and then finding out you can’t put it in reverse or buying a TV and finding out you can only watch so many channels. Rewind and fast forward are inherent features to a tape deck. This is a crime against humanity.

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I looked online to see other people’s reviews and it looks like the turntable loses speed after some use (some report it slowing down and/or not working before a month of ownership. I haven’t had this problem). Some people say tape decks get stuck, other people say the CD’s won’t play. So I guess I’m kind of a lucky buyer in this case.

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I haven’t had any of these problems, but it looks like they’re serious, and it looks like they’re common. If you just want a record player, it does the trick, or at least it has for me. Just keep your receipt to be safe, and keep your eye on the turntable speed.

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I’m giving the Crosley a C+. It’s a good record player, MP3 player, and CD player, but it actually lies to the consumer about its cassette playing ability.

Michael Stipe has designed a range of 199 cassette style jewelry for Martin Margiela, Though most of them are not practical, I actually like some of them, and wouldn’t mind seeing if i can get my hands on them!

Memory #146: Someone has made art involving conkers. They have collected one conker short of a million and each one is encased in a small glass cabinet and is named: It makes me feel like it is impossible to ever collect enough conkers.

Memory #147: There is also a display of old pictures of the clouds from down below. They look so innocent. Remembering looking up at them and also travelling through them makes me feel very …

Memory #148:

Memory #149:

Memory #150:

Memory #151: Vixen McGogh is only one artist still working at this end of the spaceship and she looks after the galleries too. Her medium is smells.

Memory #152: I think my brain may still be tangled from my journey but McGogh’s smell pieces are truly amazing. She shows me seemingly endless rooms, each of which features one of her works. She blends different smells together which combine to create a picture in your head. It is truly remarkable. The smells seem to hang in the air indefinitely.

Memory #153: My favourite piece of smell art is one which somehow manages to conjour up an image of a young farmer boy staring up into a vibrant blue sky and watching his red balloon drift off as though it is the only thing he has in the world. Do not ask me how it works for I do not know, I will just tell you that I think it is beautiful.

Memory #154: I go back to the crash site and sit with Rusty. It really is a remarkable collection of crashed buses. It seems like practically everything here is art. Three days after I arrive another bus comes hurtling down and mangles itself into the landscape.

Memory #155: I am glad I brought food with me as there seems to be nothing to eat here. Engine parts have never been my favourite.

Memory #156: It is a long walk back. Even though I know that there will be no traffic for three days I still prefer to walk on the pavement. There seems little point in having pavement on this road but then it also has hedges and street lamps.

Memory #157: The long walk has eroded the soles of my shoes away so that there are big gaping holes in them. They used to have a map of the world on them but that too has gone. It was always easy to see a picture of home with them around.

Memory #158: Now they are a constant reminder that home has gone.

Memory #159: I put them in the bin and consign them to an eternity floating around the space ocean. I will have to go barefoot from now on. This place could really do with a shoeshop.

Memory #160: Instead of a shoeshop a new restaurant has opened whilst I was away. It is called Cashew’s. I am not sure who owns it but it certainly has a lot of cashews.

Memory #161: The Edward Woodward clan are gathered around a table eating thirty-one different varieties of cashew nuts from thirty-one bowls in the middle of the table.

Memory #162: From the four hundred-strong menu the clan have chosen the following types of cashew nuts: garlic, honey, rosbif, capuccino, toothpaste, earth, beer, orange, richter scale, lime, pepper, fruit pastilles, cajun, seaweed, cajun seaweed, conker, paper, cumin, thyme, peanut, pineapple, hip-hop, ink, dew, tomato, cobweb, revenge, dystopia, onion, dandelion and chocolate.

Memory #163: Thirty one? Yes, there had been a new addition to the clan – Ebjarb Joobjarb, the bouncing baby son of Ebwarb Woobwarb, father, and Ejwarj Woojwarj, mother. I congratulated them and contemplated the stitched-together name.

Memory #164: I envisage generations and generations of oddly named children until the name Edward Woodward is completely lost, the years carrying it further and further away until it is all but burnt in a huge wicker effigy.

Memory #165: Back in the here and now they all seem to be enjoying their cashew nuts so I glance quickly at the menu which also includes: mango chutney, pesto, plastic, story, vanilla essence, sweat, asparagus, old rope and absinthe but, deciding I am not in the mood for cashew nuts I leave it for another day.

Memory #166: The opening of Cashew’s has affected the trade of the the space-ship-shop-shippitity-shop-ship-shop-open-non-stop (to give it its full name) and so I go there to show my support and buy some whisky and another toblerone. Chocolate, like cheese, just seems better in triangles.

Memory #167: It is nice to see out of the window into space again. The fish peer in at me as if we had a casual relationship like perhaps we meet at bus stops and since they had not seen me for a while they had wondered where I was. They had no idea where to start enquiring about me. Of course we do not know each other but we exist on the fringes of our respective memories.

Memory #168: I curl up on my rounded plastic seat and enjoy falling asleep in it. Soon though I slide off the seat again. I think it has been polished whilst I was away.

Memory #169: Now seems like as good a time as any to try out Cashew’s. My stomach seems to be revolting at just being fed endless toblerones.

Memory #170: The food at Cashew’s is quite expensive and so I must go to a cash machine on the way. I take my bank cassette out of its plastic case and insert it into the hole. The machine fluuurrps it in. The cassette is a modern space invention which stores information on miles of magnetic tape. This space age invention is not without its problems – the tape often becomes tangled and can completely confuse your important finance details.

Memory #171: Today it is happy to give me money and so I take some out and at Cashew’s I order the autumn leaves flavoured cashews for my stomach and a portion of chewing gum flavoured cashews for me.

Memory #172: I like to think whilst I eat. I think about floating in space. Have I always been floating in space? I can’t remember. I can’t remember not floating in space and I can’t remember getting on the spaceship. But then, I have a memory of a home. Once. A long long woolly way away. Away from where I am floating in space. I must have always been floating in space.

Last Tuesday was an important day for Scarlett – she heard Master of Puppets for the first time. She said she liked it, although that’s not much of a compliment considering her love of  jingles and kid’s TV songs. It’s not her first metal (of course), although possibly her first thrash.

The interesting fact was she was listening to Metallica on cassette, the same cassette that I first heard the album on in 1994. Back then it belonged to my friend Chris, passing into my hands along with Kill ‘Em All when he went to university.

Scarlett’s nearly old enough to pick out (swear) words, so obviously we’ll soon have to limit what she hears. I’m thinking death metal; I’ve got loads of albums where I can’t make out any of the lyrics so they’ll be fine for a 2 year old.

I must point out that the pun in the post title isn’t mine – it’s a metallica-style typeface by Ray Larabie.

Ma Mixtape est un nouveau type de billet qui va revenir régulièrement. L’idée est simple, si je devais faire une cassette pour mon walkman, qu’est-ce que je mettrais dessus ?
Voilà ma réponse du moment.

SIDE A.

The Dead Weather	Treat Me Like Your Mother
Elbow	Ground On Divorce
Them Crooked Vultures	Gunman
The Rodeo (feat. Olympia)	Amazing (Kanye West Cover)
Metric	Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright (Bob Dylan Cover)

SIDE B.

Benjamin Biolay	Brandt Rhapsodie (duo avec Jeanne Cherhal)
Eiffel	Je m’obstine
Flight of The Conchords	Too Many Dicks on the Dancefloor
TV on The Radio	DLZ
Arctic Monkeys	Pretty Visitors

Un lien vers le Flickr d’une artiste que je trouve assez surprenante et créative.
Iri5, de son vrai nom Erika Iris Simmons,  est une américaine nostalgique de 25 ans passionnée par la musique, la pop culture et l’art en général, qui utilise principalement des matériaux non-conventionnels (vieux livres, K7, Cartes à jouer, cartes de crédit, magasines…) pour reproduire des photos, personnages ou symboles célèbres. Peintre et sculpteur aussi, ses œuvres sont utilisées en illustration de nombreux sites web mais aussi des magasines à travers le monde.
Entant que Green artist, les produits utilisés pour la composition de ses oeuvres sont trouvées dans les poubelles ou sinon données par des proches.
J’ai trouvé que son travail avec des bobines de cassettes audio pour recréer des pochettes ou des portraits était particulièrement bien fait et intéressant. A vous de voir.

Iri5’s Flickr

Something said in the comments has been on my mind lately. I was told that I’m the most famous thing to come out of my town. Now, this town has a population of 1500 so I think just moving out of the town makes you famous, but anyway,,,I got to thinking that they really should have expected it. After all, I was pretty much a child prodigy when it came to the performing arts.

Let’s go over my fame related history in the town, shall we?

My first brush with notoriety came when my brothers,  two neighbours, and I ended up in the local paper for finding a snapping turtle by a pond. I got a taste of media-related attention and I was hooked – at the tender age of five.

My second experience came within the year. Like any self-respecting Canadian kid, I started ice-skating lessons. At the end of the winter session all the parents come out and see what we’d learned. There we were, all in costumes (I was a pig…with coke bottle glasses…so pathetic even Charlotte would have turned her eight legged-back on me) and ready to display our skating ‘talents’. Since I was the tallest one in the group I got to lead the pack. Well, once I got out on the ice and the adoration from the spectators made it’s way through to my hamhocks I got giddy. So giddy that I forgot to lead our group back off the ice. 10 minutes later (seemingly years, says my mom now), our teacher, after repeated attempts to wave me in, had to physically come out and retrieve us.

It was too late, though…my young mind had now made the connection; stage = captive audience.

Next were the jazz dancing lessons. Oh, the costumes, the moves, the SEQUINS!! Nothing more beautiful to a young girl than shiny sequins on mini-skirts and frilly bodices. I specifically remember the recital where I had a cat fight on stage with another pint-sized dancer about what the steps were supposed to be. I still maintain that she was doing them wrong but think the snickering from the audience made it worth it. Even bad press is good press, right? I should have sent her a Thank You card.

At seven I attended my first town Talent Show held at the local grade school. There was a band playing and I ran up to the steps beside the stage and shook my little money-maker for all to see. Thus a seed had been planted and I decided that the next year I’d be ONSTAGE. I spent the next 358 days obsessing about it. A week before the big event I started to think about what I was going to perform. DANCE! and, and, and, GYMNASTICS!,,,,TOGETHER!! So, I picked out my tunes (ABBA, naturally) and started to practice in our backyard. I was tumbling. I was shaking. I was rocking. I was rolling. I was READY!! The night of my much anticipated performance my stomach was awash in nerve spasms, but that didn’t slow me down. I heard my name called and stepped up to the stage. Handing over my taped music (taped, as in a cassette – you know,, a cassette?? Oy, if you don’t know what that is JFGI…I’m not taking responsibility for educating the youth of the world in media history) I assumed my position in the middle of the stage…the music started annnnnnd I promptly forgot my routine. In a panic I just flailed my arms, did some cartwheels and threw in an extra forward roll…or five. It turned out great, though, because my routine was only intended to be fourteen seconds long. As I took my bow in front of the stunned crowd I was a bit confused when I overheard the MC say “Susie..um, was that it??”  To me, it was a triumph akin to Alexander the Great taking Persia.

However, every great empire must eventually fall and fall I did. Hard. At some point in my youth my parents decided to add piano playing to my long list of accomplishments (apparently, it wasn’t enough to be able to pat my head while concurrently rubbing my tummy). The Kiwanis Club hosted yearly competitions for kids who played instruments. I spent a lot of time with my beloved piano instructor (she scared the shit out of me half the time) getting ready for the event. I was to memorize and play a  piece by Mozart. We were not allowed to read the music while we played. Not that it mattered because I only ever played by ear anyway – a fact that was proven to the entirety of the recital hall when, halfway through, I forgot the rest of the piece and had to start from the beginning…..7 times over. The sheet music was finally offered in pity. Fifteen attempts later I finish the piece . Good thing too because I could see that the audience was at the beginning stages of becoming uncomfortable – or catatonic…I can’t exactly remember which. Can you believe they didn’t even give me a ribbon for Best Effort??

I began to suspect that what I needed was more constant exposure so, when my friend told me about how much fun she was having singing in her church’s youth choir, I knew I’d found the answer. Every Wednesday after school we had practice and every Sunday the choir master, who lived up the street from me, would drive me to church where I excitedly donned my robes with the members of the Senior choir always careful not to snag a hook on the sea of panty-hosed legs around me  (I had learned from experience to never piss off a Church lady by snagging her hose before show-time. Yikes!). I know, I know, I can hear you all screaming, “But, but, you’re a godless heathen!!” Yes, I am – but at the time all I cared about was the fact that they paid us to sing His praise in cookies. Heathens like cookies – it’s a perk of going to the dark side.  Anyway, I failed Sunday School and eventually gave it all up.

But, the fire was burning inside me…one day I’d make it out of that little town and find fame and glory.

Or, it could just be that I’ve totally misread my friend’s comment and what she really meant that I was famous for being such a comedy of errors in my youth that the townspeople only missed me for the comic relief my pathetic attempts provided.

Yeah…that must be it.

• This was a huge hit back in the late 80’s, recognized as the definitive work on the subjective nature of ugliness. As the 90’s progressed, the true profundity of the lyric came to be popularly understood and assimilated, culminating in mass acceptance of the fact that we are all, at the end of the day, ugly swine.

  On a fateful Friday in June of 1997, after legislation was unanimously passed in Dáil and Seanad Éireann, a referendum changed Bunreacht Na hÉireann and banned the judging of by appearances forever.

  While initially this may have seemed like a marvellous advance for society, unfortunately it backfired by giving rise to an immense and unforeseen arrogance that swept unforbearing across the country. Many ugly swine began to appear in the national media, they obtained work as important public figures such as doctors, dentists and bank managers. Being an ugly swine came to be considered healthy as they obtained positions in important state departments and ultimately as leader of the aforementioned Dáil Éireann.

  As the stricken country slowly awakens from this nightmare, some may look to the past and blame this song. However, it should be noted that the simultaneous introduction of mobile telephony meant that by the year 2000 there was no longer any need anyway for the ugly swine to sit at home by the phone.
  In the authors opinion this was also a major contributing factor to social change as it became acceptable to sit in transited places, bars, cafés, or indeed outside in parks, with a telephone in full public view, – as if to say. “He’s about to call… he’s about to call….”

  The Song that started it all
  Bull – Ugly Swine

  Disclaimer: Certain happenings mentioned in this review article may or may not have taken place in your own personal version of reality.

De nieuwe en zeer exclusieve collectie Nike Sportswear jackets/jassen en t-shirts van kunstenaren PARRA en CASSETTE PLAYA zijn nu te koop op www.ilovesneakerz.nl en bij UNKNOWN (Alkmaar).

Si vous tourniez sur la tête en 84 avec Turbo et Ozone, ou si vous aviez un bonnet raton laveur, un survet Adidas, un bandeau de pirate sur l’oeil et des chaînes en or de 8kg, vous savez de quoi je parle. Pour les autres, le Ghettoblaster (ou BoomBox, mais j’aime pas ce nom), c’est cet énorme lecteur de musique portable que les gens se mettaient sur l’épaule pour avoir l’air cool dans la rue.

Et comme Lasonic a senti votre envie de vous déchirer les tympans et de vous fracturer l’épaule pour faire votre fluo kid, il réédite son modèle culte, le I931, en remplaçant le lecteur K7 (vous avez pas connu ça vous les jeunes) par un deck iPod, et en ajoutant des fonctions cool comme la radio, un port USB, un lecteur de carte SD, une entrée auxiliaire et une télécommande.

Pour avoir fait une block party dans une pièce de 13m2 avec l’un de ces engins, je peux vous dire que la qualité et la puissance du son sont assez impressionnantes. Avec une préférence pour le modèle tout blanc en terme de coloris, bien que le noir fasse plus authentique. Bah oui, je suis rétro mais pas trop quoi.

Dispo sur le site de Veentage, entre 249 et 289 euros

Para las personas que todavia tienen cassettes, con las buenas rolas oldies que se escuchaban en los 90’s, llega este dispositivo que te ayudara a volver a escuchar esas rolas. 
Este gadget es conectado por USB y te ayudara a pasar las rolas o cosas que tenias grabados a MP3 para que las vuelvas a oir, aunque con el mundo de ahora, todo lo puedes bajar, pero si sientes que no te puedes deshacer de ellos pues entonces compra esto. Es facil de usar y se puede utilizar en Mac o Windows, el dispositivo se alimenta con energia de la computadora o puedes ponerle un par de pilas AA, el precio es accesible, asi que aqui les dejamos el link para que vean que rollo con esto.

[USB Tape Express]

If Hip Hop and R’nB lover carry on jukebox on their shoulder, can they carry this?

Today I decided to have another look at Infectious and feature two of theirs iPod Skins designs. Although different in terms of execution and style, they both are connected by using the same object in the design, bringing us back to the days, where the concept of portable music started to be widespread, with “walkman” portable audio cassette. The other reason for making a post about Infectious today, is that you can now use their Custom Design Application to create personalized items, by uploading your own pictures.
Clicking on the images will take to that product´s page, so that you can see the design in greater detail, or you can use the link on the sidebar to go to Infectious homepage.

Hoy iba sentada en el metro y me dio por mirar a mi alrededor. De pronto reparé en unos chicos que iban con sus auriculares escuchando música. ¿Qué tiene esto de especial? Os estareis preguntando. Pues bien cuando sacaron sus iPod me di cuenta de todo lo que habían evolucionado las tecnologías en relación a la reproducción de música. Desde el tocadiscos hasta el nuevisimo iPod.

Recordé que mi primer aparato de reproducción fue un bastisimo walkman que me regalaron el día de mi comunión y aquellas cintas que abultaban un montón si querías llevartelo fuera. A mi generación nos parecía lo más y lo veíamos insustituible. Pero como todo en esta vida acabé relegandolo al segundo cajón de mi mesilla cuando llegó un aparato nuevo que nos dejó a todos onnubilados.

Y ese aparato era … el discman. Este nuevo método ya no implicaba llevarnos las aparatosas cintas o cassettes, pero no nos librariamos de llevarnos algo a cuestas y ese algo eran los famosos CD. Tenian como ventaja su ligereza y su capacidad. Y como siempre creíamos que nada iba a cambiar y que nos quedaríamos eternamente con nuestro “ligero” trasto a cuestas. Pero no, otro aparato más que pasaría a ocupar otro cajón.

El MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 o como lo denominamos los mortales el Mp3. Pequeñito, con un diseño atractivo pero lo más importante era su capacidad. Podías meter en los mejores casos más de 300 canciones, además de utilizarlo como pendrive para otro tipo de documentos (de texto en su mayoría). Y a éste le sucedió el Mp4 que ya nos permitía llegar un poco más lejos. Reproducia vídeos. ¡Wow!

¿Creías haberlo visto todo? Pues llegó el día en el que Apple nos presentaba su iPod. Funciona a través del iTunes un software que nos permite transferir desde fotos hasta correos electrónicos. Alucinante nos permite conectarnos a la red. Junto al iPod me gustaría vincular al Spotify.

Os preguntareís que es el Spotify, pues bien se trata de una aplicación que nos permite escuchar música directamente de una web sin necesidad de efectuar una descarga. La versión gratuita nos permite escucharla pero con intervalos de publicidad. Si en cambio adquieres la versión premium la publicidad desaparece y puedes además abrir la lista de reproducción, guardada en la aplicación, desde el iPod.

Me bajé del metro y volví a la realidad. Pero no pude evitar cuestionarme que si en 20 años de vida había vivido tantos cambios de tecnología en el mundo de la música (los nombrados aquí y los que me he dejado en el camino) ¿qué ocurrira en el futuro? ¿Seremos capaces de escuchar música con un reproductor del tamaño de un botón que nos permita interactuar en la red? Puede que sí pero de momento dejemos que nuestro cuerpo termine de acostumbrarse a lo que tenemos.

Y ahí dejo un vídeo para recordar uno de los primeros modelos de walkman que tanto nos acompañaron.

For some time after making the momentous decision to leave the academic life I went through a period of grieving for that life. I did not really recognize it as grief, at first, as I was still not particularly well and simply assumed the melancholy and lack of appetite for day to day things was a result of my depleted energy and constant aches and pains.

I did not seek out any of my friends from university and became more reclusive than I had been for some years. Studying had been a huge part of my life, had actually transformed the way I thought about my life, and I was running on empty. I felt I had nothing left to say, nothing to give, and that I was facing a hard, cold, unfulfilling future in which I would always feel compromised because I was no longer pursuing a career that seemed perfect for me.

I also felt alone but I had grown used to that. After breaking up with my son’s mother, almost a decade earlier, I had entered into relationships, here and there, but it was now clear to me that I had spent those ten years making strange choices when it came to women. What these fairly short-term relationships all had in common suddenly seemed obvious: they were not likely to go anywhere. The people I went out with were, for one reason or another, quite unsuitable and at some level I must have known this before getting involved with them. Seems I did not actually want a serious relationship after all, even though the times I spent on my own were quite lonely.

I thought a lot about this as winter approached. My most enduring relationship was with my son. I was still – and remain – estranged from my daughter: the more time passed the harder and harder it became to explain why I had been such a pointless father to her. And were the relationships I’d had really with the wrong people, I had to ask myself, or is it just that I am dreadful at relationships? The common denominator in all of my relationships, after all, was me.

And then I met my wife.

Of course I did not know then that she’d be my wife one day, just as I had not known it on several other occasions when our paths had crossed fleetingly down the years. I first met Future Mrs Planet seventeen years ago. She came to one of my gigs and bought the cassette of my songs which I was promoting at the time. As I recall she was wearing great boots but I did not imagine that she would one day be my wife any more than she imagined I’d be her future husband. I was, at that time, with my daughter’s mum. And she was at college and more interested in her art than some singer in a local bar. She did like the cassette, however, of which more later.

The following year, or possibly the same year, we met again outside her college. I think I was either there to meet a friend or was gigging later that evening on campus. I don’t know whether Future Mrs Planet and I remembered each other from the previous meeting but she approached me as I sat outside in the sunshine and played ‘L & N Don’t Stop Here Any More’. She wanted to know whose song it was. I told her Michelle Shocked sang it (although she hadn’t written it) and that it came from one of her first two albums. I still didn’t know that I would marry this woman sometime in the 21st century.

Our paths crossed years later on the internet. I can’t remember how now – was she a friend of a friend on one of the social networking sites? Possibly. Anyway, I recognized the church in one of her photos because many years before (long before she bought my cassette) I had crawled out from a party near there really early one morning and sat on the back steps of the same church and played some songs. I sent her a message to that effect and she might have replied but it’s all a bit odd getting messages from strangers on the internet especially when the stranger is saying “You know that church by your house, I know exactly where it is.” I loved the red dress she was wearing in one of her other photos but I don’t think I told her that and I still had no idea that I would ask her to marry me in a couple of years time.

Some time after that I had pretty much given up on that particular social networking site and moved on to a different one. Again I came across the picture of the woman in the red dress. So I sent her a friend request or a message – or both – and she accepted it. She was in a relationship at the time and I was still convinced that I was destined to be alone so mostly our interaction consisted of playing Scrabble online. She beat me a lot.

One day we started conversing in the little Scrabble message box. Previously we’d only really used it to say things like ‘Oh you beat me again then, young lady. Well done.’ On this occasion she asked how I was and for some reason, instead of the standard ‘Fine, how are you?’ response we’re meant to give our online acquaintances, I told her I wasn’t so great that day. And so she wanted to know why and I had to explain a bit about having had to quit university and illness and stuff like that and it turned out to be quite a cathartic process. A few weeks later I went up to meet this new friend of mine and got lost trying to find the entrance to her house. As I was standing in the graveyard of the aforementioned church I wondered what on earth I was doing, travelling thirty miles up from Exeter to see a stranger. Turns out I was changing my life forever. When I failed to find her front door I called her on my mobile and suddenly there she was walking towards me and smiling.

I loved the hours I spent with my new friend (and her sometimes talkative, sometimes shy youngest daughter) and when it was time to go it felt too soon. Back home I felt the stirring of emotions but reminded myself not to even think about that kind of connection as Future Mrs Planet was with someone. We met up a few more times over the next few weeks, always for a few hours here and there. Each time I felt more and more strongly about her. I didn’t know nor did I want to ask whether she felt the same. Actually I went through a lot of guilt over how I’d begun to feel about her as I’ve never been one to steal people’s girlfriends away. And anyway, just because I felt something, why should that mean she did? But she did and she was torn, although not for long as her boyfriend broke up with her in a fit of petulance over some minor incident in which he thought he ought to get his own way. I could have shaken him by the hand.

And so we got together and the feelings grew and I realized something very important in life. You know that cliche stuff about the love of your life being someone who understands you, who completes you, who does not want to alter who you are but simply wants to share your life and your time with you? Well sometimes cliches become cliches because they are true. That is exactly how my life with Mrs Planet is.

We were married this year and I knew that all of the changes and all of the apparent setbacks of the previous fifteen or so years of my life had actually all been part of my journey to this moment, to this incredible new beginning with my wonderful wife. Oh, and she still has the cassette I sold her seventeen years ago (in very good condition too). She didn’t work out that it was me for some time as I used to perform under a stage name. But she thought my voice was strangely familiar. Eventually it clicked. Isn’t life great when it works out like this?

Going lo-fi

After all the hype, rants, raves and “Pitchforkery,” I finally took the plunge and caught a Wavves one night at Bowery Ballroom. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I wouldn’t say I was a Wavves fan, but I’d heard his latest album and was impressed. So his appearance with Woods and Real Estate was definitely enough to persuade me into a ticket purchase. It was, suffice it to say, a perfect sampling of the lo-fi craze that’s got the blogs in a frenzy and musicians everywhere turning to GarageBand instead of a recording studio, so I dove in.

However, what struck me at the show wasn’t the tape hiss, or hollowed-out vocals or even the rough-shod guitar lines. It was the songcraft. Real Estate and Woods both opened the show with phenomenally impressive sets. The songs were beautiful, removed from the hazy basements that their records call to mind, and thrust into a setting that let them breathe, opening up the full tonality of the guitars and allowing the sheer power of volume to fatten the sound. Woods were especially awesome, with flamethrower solos and equally tender bits (“The Number” may be my favorite song of the year) that made them sound like the pop band they should be seen as.

This got me thinking. With songwriting this sincere, music this great, why the low fidelity? Why bury your work in sloppy sounding recordings? Anyway I looked at it and I couldn’t avoid the economic reasons. Music like this just isn’t seen as financially viable anymore. True pop had its heyday pre-’80s, when over-production excesses and marketing blitz became the norm for production. Since then, it’s been the artists with the “best” studios and “best” producers that control the pop market (read: most money). So, for an artist starting out today, with few resources or recording knowledge and a love for ’60s beach pop or for traditional folk, that GarageBand program or a four-track cassette recorder starts looking better all the time.

However, what’s most striking  about this aesthetic shift is the sheer scale of democracy such a movement precipitates. It is simple economics: lower barriers to entry lead to more competitors in the market. As people discover more music, the bands gain a following, possibly even a record deal. So from here, we’ve taken the power out of the hands of the music-lover (or blog!) to discern what’s worth our time. Intrigued? I hope so, because maybe it means that the next Michael Jackson (God willing) could emerge out of nowhere thanks to an album he cut in his bedroom on a laptop. We’ve already seen that sort of meteoric rise from Soulja Boy, so we can only go up from here, right?

Accordingly, I’m not saying all lo-fi as a rule of thumb is great. I was a bit unenthused by Wavves; the music was high-energy but lacking in any actual songcraft beyond some interesting noise and heavy bar-chords. Suffice it to say it wasn’t my favorite, but music like that has its place, and the market has spoken.

Now, it’s entirely possible, however, that I’m loading a simple choice with a colossal amount of hypotheticals. For all I know, it could be some reflection of generational indifference to quality mirrored in the current fashion sense of the hipsters I keep seeing flood the streets of Williamsburg daily, or even something REALLY serious. Either way, for the time being, it’s reassuring to know that a great songwriter can eat, maybe even live, on the strength of a stellar four-song demo cassette. After all, as Americans, isn’t such a rags-to-riches story what we all believe in?

– Dan Creahan

Oh, the cassette. The source of many an inspiration for us. Not only has it been countlessly great for the music world. It’s now factoring into the technology world and the fashion world. Yes, now the tape is being turned into an environmentally-friendly tie. The above is the product. We wonder if they’re playable.

Click here to view the rest of the photos on Flickr

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