Does music seem better on the radio than when played on your own personal sound system?
This might be a personal foible. I don’t know, you tell me. But when I’m flipping around the radio dial — or rather, punching the various buttons on my car or home radios — a whole multitude of songs I have on vinyl, tape, or disc will come on and I’ll stop changing channels to listen. but I won’t necessarily go and put the very same song on my sound system. As a matter of fact, I’m looking for those very songs, the ones I own but don’t necessarily play, and I like hearing them better when I know they are being played on live radio.
What, they sound better to me when I know the experience is being shared with lots of strangers I’ll never meet?
I can’t really explain it. Maybe it has something to do with what’s live, happening now, in the broader culture. I first noticed it when I told a long-time friend about a program, 10 at 10, that plays ten great songs (and audio clips) from one great year. We used to go to concerts together, so share a lot of the same “musical history,” if you will. He said he prefered just listening to the music he likes rather than taking his chances with someone else’s choices.
Okay; there’s a certain logic to that. Still.
It’s also true for movies or programs I buy on TV. I get the complete set of Thin Man movies or Nero Wolfe shows or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and they often sit there, waiting. But if I’m flipping around and I see it on TV, I’ll sit and watch.
Does this happen for you?
I think I’m the opposite. I sit at work with my headphones on, listening to my music via iTunes on my mac. I like to know that I’m not going to hate anything which comes on. And the worse fate I can imagine is being forced to listen to anyone else’s iTunes, on a long car journey, say. Even though they probably have much the same stuff as I do, since my tastes are fairly mainstream.
agreed … i prefered my own tunes selection, according to the moment, mood and place.
You’re not the only one, although I’m not like that myself. In fact, it drives me nuts to watch something on television if I own the dvd, but everyone around me seems to prefer that experience.
Wow, I’m such a minority here. I guess it re-affirms my sense that it’s becoming a more fractious art world, and music is losing the sense of shared experience it had for so many of us a few decades ago.
I prefer the radio. I have xm satelite radio and the sound isn’t the same or as good as what you hear from the local radio. It’s the stereo effect I beleive that makes it sound like your almost listening to it Live or something like that.
Really, the music I normally hear is not on the radio a lot.
Tarts, I’ve been meaning to try satellite radio — but to listen to certain ballgames I want to hear, not for music.
I think there’s something about subconsciously knowing it’s what’s out there, with other people hearing it, that makes it seem better live on the radio rather than playing my own.
I think it happens for a lot of people, or else they wouldn’t request stuff on the radio. And I love 10@10. Glad Dave’s still doing it, even though he left KFOG.
Just passing by. Your website has great content!
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My husband got me an iPod, unexpectedly, for reasons very much tied to this — I’d begun exploring new music, reigniting my love of all of it with the new stuff, but the family + my new stuff? Not so much. I have been asked (politely) by my younger son to listen with a headset, rather than out in the open at home. So there’s a lot of stuff I’d love to listen to openly with people, but it’s not happening. Not with these people, anyway. 😉
I listen to music on my computer or MP3 player. I DO however listen to an AM station out of Portland. Mostly to just The Rick Emerson show. (it’s a geek fest of pop culture, watches…You really just have to experience it)
I think one of the reasons I like it is the huge community here that listens to the show and how much they participate in show events.
For me, it depends. I like listening to the radio for the new things I’ll hear that broaden my horizons. But as a serious classical music enthusiast, and because I’m coming to my listening often with different agendas that spring out of my professional background, I also enjoy listening to things from my own collection.
I like variety, though, so radio is great for that. My husband, on the other hand, can listen to one thing obsessively–he’s made discs for himself of music from Japanese animation films, games, and other sources. He’s got the discs in the car, and I’ve got to say that long road trips with him are kind of interesting for me, because after about the third, seventh, twentieth go-round, I’m about ready to claw through the windshield and run screaming down the median!
At least he likes things that have good melodies–well, most of them do, anyway. It’s probably karmic payback for all the times he’s had to listen to me practice Prokofiev!
J, great to hear you are also a 10@10 fan — I still tune in, though Dave Morey has semi-retired. And it seems to me that he has become much more esoteric. He no longer plays as many of the mainstream long-mothballed hits of long-gone years, but he plays more of the offbeat stuff that never got as much play. And he has a much greater Motown focus now. I like some, but it’s more an extra dish, rather than the main course.
Sorry to be so delayed — I’ve been distracted, pre-occupied, etc.
LFC: that’s very funny. Give them time. At a certain point in the teens, it’s every kid’s job to think his parents’ taste is hopelessly square, un-chic, antiquated, embarrassing, or un-listenable. Or some combination thereof. But some day in the future, maybe in their 20s, I’ll bet you find out they’ve “discovered” one of these artists.
Which will be time for: “Their new stuff is good — it’s not like that old stuff.”
Raolin, well, that’s what I’m talking about. The shared experience of a moment.
Now that I think of it, another example is found in the nostalgic film “American Graffitti.” It can seem corny now, to our eyes and ears, but part of what made Wolfman Jack cool was that everyone in town was plugged into it.
Halfnotes, that’s very funny about your husband. It reminds me of an old gender distinction I read years ago, how men can focus in and obsess about one thing for hours; say, taking apart a car engine. And dis-assemble all the pieces to diagnose and clean and re-assemble and dis-assemble again until their wives say, “how can you sit and look at that same pile opf parts for hours and hours?”
Whereas women can walk into and around a department store, and half an hour later remember what all they have and where it all is.
I think you should negotiate at the beginning of trips — no disk will be listened to more than twice. Okay, three times — but really, that’s it.
I just came back to see if you had anything new to say, but it seems you’re still distracted by life. Been awhile, huh?
I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, after an earthquake and a hearty storm one night, talking to a fellow classmate, who told me he really liked earthquakes because for a bit of time at least, we were a collective…everyone was thinking about the same thing. Turn on local radio, and everyone is talking about the same thing (more true then before so many stations started voice tracking shifts, and there were actually DJs in the booth at all hours…). I took that to heart, and I really enjoyed whatever temblors we had for the next few years. Of course, Loma Prieta cured me of that. I’ve not been able to enjoy a good earthquake since, because now I wonder if anyone has died under an overpass or something. Blech.
On a lighter note, the magnolia trees (tulip trees, I call the pink flowered ones) are crazy here as well. I find myself liking the ones that are either young or pruned, because they have a certain elegance to them, whereas the big trees in full bloom seem somehow vulgar and prodigal, you know? Must be my repressed British/Puritan roots coming out.
J, you are exactly right. I’d say the well has been dry lately, but that has not entirely been it.
I do occasionally think of things. Often there are a couple conjoined ideas in mind, kind of a point/counterpoint thing, and I even begin scheming it — say during commutes or early insomniac mornings. But by the time I get to pen and paper it’s absent-mindedly lost.
I like your point about earthquakes bringing people together. Loma Prieta sure did that.
I worked at Winfield Potter’s for awhile too. Quite awhile actually I wonder if we know each other?