Inside Looking Out.

These days (while it's snowing heavily outside) I'm wading through piles of old records, simply because I'm quite bored with what's happening in the music business today. And yesterday, too. And as it looks, tomorrow all the same. And I'm not talking about commercial mainstream here, mind you... question: when did the CD format appear? Anybody? In 1982, Sony and Philips both had products ready to go. In the fall of the same year, CD technology is introduced in Europe, then in the US in the spring of '83. That year, 30,000 players were sold in the US as well as 300,000 CDs. However, the development took quite some time: in 1970, Philips introduced a glass disc prototype to be read by a laser, and while professionals utilized tape based PCM recording in broadcast and recording, a Digital Audio Disc Convention was held in Tokyo in 1978 where standards were defined as well as specifications agreed upon - amongst others the maximum playing time was decided to be slightly more than 74 minutes. And that's the biggest change: while average playing time of vinyl records was about 20 minutes per side (unless you decided to reduce volume level and thereby degrading fidelity), and five, six, even seven minute songs weren't that unusual, the average record (containing 'progressive' music) sported six to eight tracks or forty minutes of playback. And because after twenty minutes you had to flip sides, the whole perception was different. Often, the first track on side B would be killer. There was the usual single / strong track on side A that was intended to demand air play, so after turning the record over you had to hear another strong track right away to perceive that record as a 'good' one. So if you had an album with six tracks, and four of them are somewhat outstanding, that made a killer LP (of course...). On today's CDs, you easily find twelve tracks or more. Now if four of these twelve were good, that would still be less than one third (unless these four were also the longest tracks). That would be one explanation of why we seem to have so many mediocre records today - but they could still provide as many strong tracks as those killer albums back in the old days. The reason this isn't the case is that a) there's a lot of designer bands out there today. Forget about personalities, exploring new terrain, forming an entity - it's simple marketing decisions. No experiments, so you get the same song in different disguises with the occasional ballad thrown in. b) It's so much harder to fill a CD with decent stuff just because there's so much space, so the artist(s) might get lost in their decisions on which songs to pick. They have to produce more tracks to chose from in the first place, so that's another diluting factor... Less is more? Definitely the case here. Why am I telling you this? I don't know - it just occurred to me while listening to the old vinyls, all (well, some) of those memories came back and I was just wondering... when did I have such a strong feeling with a new CD these days? And what's wrong with today's radio playing all that designer stuff? But that's just a different post... one last thing - which is totally random, but anyway. Among those treasures I'm listening through, there's Nick Mason's Ficticious Sports, an exceptional record by Nick Mason (yes, that Nick Mason) together with Robert Wyatt and the Carla Bley Band. With excellent reviews and a spectacular line-up it is said to have missed the Top 150 album charts. A lot of Floyd fans hated this when it came out (I read). Hm. They don't know shit. Amazing side note: the used CD goes for $99 US on Amazon. Highly recommended - if priced reasonably...