Original video located here. Accessed 23rd November 2023
Song title: Its Only Rock and Roll
Artist: Rolling Stones
Year: 1974
Why I like this song:
Hello again. I'm back to work on another note, proving that when it comes to crossing barriers, the written word can succeed when the spoken word cannot. For today, I'm going to revisit sharing my views and experiences all based on modern music - A subject I am passionate about to no end.
It would seem the greatest revolution to happen in popular music would be the advent of the mp3. Now, music is readily available and can reach a lot more people in a remarkably short space of time. ipods are widespread as people can hear, and share, music with greater ease than ever before. Having a enormous mp3 collection is a source of bragging rights and people even have separate hard drives on their computer dedicated to music alone.
Me, I had only become aware of mp3's when the revolution was in it's early stages (the late nineties). At first I wasn't that interested, but within time I began to see the benefits of having music readily available and it being able to reach a lot of people when the other methods fail. Now, ten years later, I have my entire CD collection backed up on mp3, I am able to discover new types of music I never would've thought of and have realized that there truly is no such thing as genre.
Of course, having a large mp3 collection is now becoming quite commonplace with both music lovers and computer geeks - and beyond. Yes I have one but I enjoy it from a different perspective: That of a librarian.
For those not in the know, I work as a librarian in a secondary school. It is my job to obtain information and resources, preserving it and making it readily available to anyone whenever they want it. However, what I do for a living can easily be applied outside of my place of work. Scoff you may but I have found many of the skills I have picked up in training as a librarian can just as easily be put to work to my mp3 collection (and hey, when you're out of a job you need to apply your skills somewhere).
Lets start with my own experiences: As stated earlier in this series, I grew up in the eighties which was a really strong time for Australian rock. I heard and grew attached to many names during this era. However! It was only years later that I realized that the eighties was a strong for alternative rock: At the same time, there existed an large number of bands that I'd never known about through radio airplay (then my primary source of musical education) and were subsequently a cut above what was ruling the airwaves at the time. Here was something well-written, sometimes raw, and, in many cases, a breed apart from the excessive, heavily produced rubbish that was being heard everywhere. Indeed, hearing such undiscovered gems was a breath of fresh air. And from that point on, it is those principle(s) of the grass being greener on the other side & going back and finding out what I missed the first time around, that has influenced my tastes in music downloads.
In recent months I have been looking back over the early Triple J Hot 100 of all time Lists (1989-1992) to find inspiration to what to listen to. This has made me find some acts that I have never heard of and give me an insight into what many people before me were listening to. Indeed, the continued existence of the Hottest 100 compilation CDs is actually rather handy, thus enabling people to discover - I recall being in my final year at High School (circa 1997), hearing the very first Hottest 100 CD (1993) and hearing a bunch of great songs for the first time.
Indeed, it is that sense of discovery that keeps me going with my musical tastes. And this is where the strength of the mp3 can be evident. It can give long-gone and forgotten acts a second lease of life. It can make heroes turned villains back into heroes. It can bring weird names into a place of distinction (Not Drowning Waving is made of Win). It can find some buried treasure in areas where one wouldn't have thought to look the first time around. It can reach many other ears when other methods fail and, through the strength of one song alone, can restore one hit wonders with a degree of credibility.
Now let's talk preservation. With my mp3 collection everything is sorted by artist and their albums. Individual songs by the one artist are collected together in the one folder, determined via decade. It may all sound uniform and organized to the point of mind-boggling but I'm a librarian: it's my job.
Anyho, I have noticed, and I'm certain I'm not alone when I say this, that the folders containing music from the past two decades (1990-2009) are certainly the most populous.
From a preservationist perspective, this is due to the mp3 revolution making material now easy to get a hold of: new music can be found as it happens without too much difficulty. So it may not be a surprise to find someone who has a detailed mp3 collection going right back to the late nineties.
But what about before then? As the 1990's/2000s folders in my collection are large indeed, the folders dedicated to the three preceding folders, 1960s/1970s/1980's are nowhere near as big. And this makes an interesting case for the preservationist. The size of my folder really says a lot: Not just about my tastes in music but in music history. Furthermore I make it a point to, seeing as everyone can have the same mp3's, not have the biggest mp3 collection but the most unique.
If my 1960's folder is kinda small, I think it is because in that time a lot of the rules were being written out and a lot of new ideas were constantly being brought to the table that would influence musicians for generations to come. Thus I have found the individual songs from that time are the type that have stood the test of time Examples: What a Wonderful World, My Girl, Happy Together, Wipeout, Brown Eyed Girl, Stand by Me, Unchained Melody, Somebody to Love - the fact that I've listed all those is proof enough of the staying power of a great song. Similarly, the albums I have are the type that have endured the destructive nature of time and still sound great to this day (The Beatles and the Rolling Stones).
The same could be said for my 1970's folder. Although the 1970's folder is the smallest out of 'the three', it too contains material that has lasted even when it's decade of origin has long gone. But in whereas individual songs are slim in number, the amount of albums in my mp3 collection are larger. Thus the 1970's, in my mp3 collection, represents something of a flipside to the 1960s. Now I've found the music of the 1970's interesting - this is due to me growing up in the nineties, discovering material from two decades earlier and seeing it's imprint all over the than current music. And in that sense, the art of preservation through mp3 is important. Although the seventies happened long before I was born, it is interesting to go back and see what happened then - and it is fun to notice that the first half was dedicated to the art of making albums (an art sadly lost in the mp3 age) whilst in the second half, a shift happened where individual songs suddenly picked up in prevalence (well, in my mp3 collection at least).
And then there's the 1980s folder: It was the decade I entered this earth and experienced my childhood. Thus it should come to no surprise that the 1980's folder is the biggest folder of 'the three'. What makes up that folder is a mixture of material that a) I heard once and left something of an impression and b) I heard years later and thought 'Whoa! Where was I when this happened?!'. As I've experienced the time where these songs had their day, it is indeed easy to recall this material and preserve it as a place in time. Yet looking back at what I experienced and what came later, it does come across as a curious mix: The former is a mixture of the cheesy (however I may find it enjoyable) whilst the latter has a bit more muscle and staying power - as if they were existing on separate planets. And that's where the preservation is important: What got passed over the first time can live and continue to thrive. As long as someone remembers it, and it can be found, anything can get a second shot.
Yet if the eighties represented music existing on separate planets then the nineties was when such barriers were broken, with the alt.rock explosion, spearheaded by Nirvana (as history maintains). This being the era that I spent most of my teens, not to mention the starting point of the mp3 revolution, so now a lot of music remains fresh in my memory (indeed, the Triple J Hottest 100 has continually been a major inspiration in this field) and it now has a method of getting a hold of with little trouble. And it is that principle that the 2000's have expanded on. Thus, in my collection, the 1960's and 1970's are a collection of great songs that have stood the test of time, the 1990's and 2000's is a recollection of music as it happened and the 1980's is the bridge between the two eras. But that is just me: If someone two decades older than me made a similar mp3 collection than their seventies folder may be bigger, as they would simply download the songs they recalled.
Considering that the mp3 has made music so easily available and distributable, it makes me wonder what current mp3's are going to stand the test of time. Similarly, I have found that some great songs I had heard years earlier are now sometimes difficult to get a hold of. I have explained how beneficial that sense of discovery is and how preservation can be utilized to great effect - Thus it makes me wonder why people download the Pussycat Dolls or some crap when some long-forgotten buried treasure still exists. With music so readily available anything can be deleted and forgotten about just as easily as it can be found. Thus, it makes me wonder what's being played today will last in the 2020's.....
As I said before, I'm not for a big mp3 collection - I want the most unique collection. I want people to pick up on what I'm listening and wonder with curiosity piqued 'What's he listening to?". I am for the mp3 being a form of musical preservation, because as long as something reaches at least one person, it is a success.
And as long as it exists, music will last forever.