An Important 20th Anniversary We All Forgot…

Friday Is Fun With Music - and always with a Playlist too!

Last week, and forgive me for not mentioning it at the time, but I was caught up in a rush of relistening to Sonic Youth – I neglected to mention one of the big 20th Anniversaries associated with music. So, I’ll fix that up today. And have no fear, I’ve worked alongside journalism for long enough to not want to play any prolonged April Fool’s Day joke. This is real. This is sincere.

You see, dear readers, last week marks 20 years since I bought my first iPod.

Such a big deal. It changed how I listened to and played music. For better and for worse.

I spent $770 on the pocket-device that no finer grump than Paul Weller once described as being “like a mini fridge. With no fucking beers in it” – and I managed to do this by going away for a long weekend and selling my soul over St. Patrick’s Day playing breakfast, lunch and dinner gigs to an utterly uncaring Havelock North pub and its trickling audience/s.

That next week I strutted into the store and threw down a wad of twenties from a plastic banking bag. I’m sure they thought I operated a tinny house. I was just there to by the new Tiny Home for my music.

Over the four or five weeks in build-up to this monumental event I had been filling my computer’s hard drive with ripped copies of my favourite CDs. Loading up music in the spaces around working, eating, and watching TV. It was actually – for a time – My Real Job. So focussed. I had to hit the ground running. My First iPod would have every Prince album on it; would need a lot of Bob Dylan; would have to have all of the classics by everyone…but would also need some space for new music. I was reviewing albums for Wellington’s Dominion Post newspaper. And this was my chance to take that work with me on the go. I could retire the discman I still sometimes took for a stroll…

What a time.

Making playlists. Click and drag. So exciting.

A home DJ – and no beer being spilled on the CDs that gathered out of covers as the evening grew towards the next day. The challenge was always whether you could make the right amount of music for the night, but also you didn’t want too many classics buried near the end. BUT you also wanted the people to hear the good songs. Yes, you needed a few pick-me-ups along the way, you needed flow, you needed hits and rarities, but nothing too obscure or someone would ask to change the music. This was such a huge responsibility.

The iPod made me lose interest in my CD collection. I started trading in the towers of albums I’d bought and been given, using the credit to build up my vinyl collection (there was a time when music was a currency all of its own, it still is of course – it’s now just a valueless currency in any fiscal sense).

That first iPod was such a soldier. But then the bigger capacity arrived – because I needed 60g, and then 80 and 160…

It was never enough.

I ended up running a 160g iPod that had nearly everything on it. A separate 80g one that contained the entire discographies of a dozen key artists (Beatles, Dylan, Prince, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young…) and a 30g ‘baby’ that was just for review-copies, promo links and samples.

It was an operation.

And then we were burgled.

We were back on our feet almost instantly. We were lucky. But ‘the operation’ had been cut off at the knees.

The insurance told me that my amazing music collection was worth two brand new shiny 30g iPods. The only models on the market at the time. They looked like iPhones. You couldn’t make calls on them. But you could do anything else – and yet you couldn’t store as much music as you’d like. I hated those new iPods, barely used them. By then I’d started moving back to CDs – as a novelty. I was almost full-time into listening to vinyl (I “worked” from home) and I played my iTunes directly from my computer through stereo speakers.

The iPod was never for purists. And I have never been a purist. I once lived next to a guy that wanted me to see his $100,000 stereo system – and more importantly to hear it I guess. But I could hear what he thought passed for music when I’d take out my recycling. So, I never bothered to break bread with that guy. Wouldn’t have been able to stand what he thought passed for taste.

The iPod was about convenience. And it was about commerce. And it commodified music in a way that started to make me wish that I was a bit of purist; acknowledging of course that actually that’s exactly what I am: a ‘bit’ of a purist…

But just recently I found the last 120g iPod I bought – sometime around 2010 I’m going to guess. It certainly hasn’t been updated since 2012/2013. And I have no way of updating it now. The iTunes that it was loaded up from all shut down, the computer copies of those files stored on an external hard drive at first, but not now. This iPod will die one day. But for now it feels like an incredible relic. Already.

I’m in the middle of digital-detox actually.

Since ditching Facebook a month ago (and not really missing it at all!) I have started to reduce the clutter in my inbox (ironic I know – please subscribe here if you haven’t! - lol) and just moving my life offline when I can. Little things. The computer that lived in the room where the music comes from…gone. No longer propping up one arm of the couch with a mainline to the stereo. I sat there like a pilot typing coordinates out to an imaginary world for so long. Soundtracking my typing, signposting my “research”, sending out my missives as angry, lonely, hopeful messages in brittle bottles. Please just break one open and read it!

Well, now I take more time. More time for myself. More time with the family. And I have gone back to a few CDs (this newsletter is being typed out while I listen to the excellent Dead Man Walking soundtrack – which I recently sourced from TradeMe – I would have had it on my iPod at one time, I would have traded the CD as part of a stack of old review copies, I would have one time thought I was going to buy the album on vinyl because I also would have one time thought that that really mattered…)

Anyway, in and around all of this detoxing, and decluttering, I found this old iPod. The last one. I have given it permanent status on the AUX switch of the stereo. It mainlines from the chord that once gave my laptop its external voice and mood and allegedly helped with its flow.

It's cool listening to music from 8-10 years ago. Albums that I loved – but had easily forgotten all about. Artists that were, for a time, so important to me (Laura Cantrell, Dawn Landes, Sufjan Stevens) but I never seem to dial them up on Spotify. I’ve got all the classics in there too – well, obviously not all of them – but my iPod threateningly ‘starts’ with ABBA “Gold”. Not sure that is ever needed but do know it’s absolutely classic.

To put on the iPod and scroll (still with some hint of curation) is to bask in limits.

And that’s what I’m trying to do these days. I realise. Bask in the limits. Embrace endpoints. Find cut-offs. Remove myself from the limitless reach, from the endless search, from the forever availability.

Things arrive (back) in your life at funny times. And then you think about how you end up reconnecting at exactly the right time.

So happy 20th Anniversary MyPod!

Playlists are the best thing about Spotify, still. And I’ll never not love those. They started for me with iPods but have been eased by Spotify. I keep trying to perfect them – every week.  So I hope you enjoy today’s.

Happy Listening across your weekend. Happy weekend across your two days to come!

And tell me about your iPod story/stories – if you have one (a story that is. And/or an iPod still…)