Random thoughts on the night of Barack Obama's acceptance speech

I'm listening to the trance album "From Here We Go Sublime" by the Field and reading Pitchforkmedia.com's list of the top 200 albums of the 60's. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to go over to a friends house and hear Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) on his dad's record player or sitting at the community pool and hearing Del Shannon's "Runaway" on the radio. At a time when the wealth of all collected culture is at my fingertips, I feel overwhelmed, blessed, but somewhat cheated. Where were you when you first heard Green Day or Marilyn Manson? I was sitting on the couch with my brother drinking a Pepsi watching MTV during one of the last few glorious summers of MTV brilliance when their programming started around 6 o'clock pm and everything before was music videos. Beavis and Butt-head did the same thing as my brother and I. Watching music videos by everyone from Primus to Soundgarden to Iron Maiden. The next generation of music geeks will have their own challenges to overcome. The death of the album will come to a great loss to music. But, the album really started becoming a concept around the time of "Dark Side of the Moon" and arguably earlier with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Before then, singles sold by the millions. One record, two songs. Side A. Side B. Did anyone ever suspect that the album would be a revolutionary advancement in the way pop music was released and listened to?

A lot of the songs on the list is by bands I've never heard of, but no the songs (at least the choruses) by heart. Like "My Boyfriend's Back." Everyone knows that song. It's fucking great. Do you know who sang it? It was...hang on...The Angels. What about "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells? Another great song. How many of the musicians of the '00s will remain anonymous, but their songs will live on in oldies internet radio history? Or at least make somebody's top 200 songs of the 2000s. What about the Macarena, or that song Mambo #5. I'm having trouble remembering who wrote those songs right now (well, Lou Vega sang Mambo #5) but what about in 40 years? How will Britney Spears be remembered 40 years after her last heart wrenching photo of her appears in some super market tabloid. How long until we stop caring? My parents have a lot of obscure albums by bands I've never heard of like Spooky Tooth. Were they like an Indie band back then? Had a couple of records and a handful of devoted fans then lost in rock obscurity only to be revisited every decade like a lost relative?

How can one keep track of all of these great albums, filed away in a certain cabinet of memory forgotten along with Algebra and the names of all the presidents. I'm 24 years old. I've been listening to pop/rock music for over a decade. I can't imagine life without the ipod. I can't imagine not having my lifetimes worth of music in my hand at any given time. If all the albums on my ipod were actual vinyl records, they could fill a house. Already, music has clogged, warped, reshaped and defined my mind. The way I think, the way I write, dream, act, learn, forget, love, hate and function as a person has all been molded by thousands and thousands of rock songs, listened to on repeat. The blips and beeps of The Field coerce my brain waves and help me concentrate on drifting off and letting my fingers do the thinking.

The definitive book on pop culture music geeks High Fidelity said it best. "Books, TV, music, these things matter." But when you become such a snob that you immediately judge a person by looking through their ipod and seeing that they don't have a single Radiohead song except Creep or Talk Show Host. Or you turn your nose up when they have one of your favorite bands on the artist list, only to discover that they only have the one single released on it. Or you scoff when you notice that they only have a few actual, full albums on their entire ipod. What are you to do? Keep it to yourself and hope that their virtue as a person will make up for their complete lack of musical taste? Assume that music is only to be enjoyed for this person when working out? Perhaps they only have a few songs on their ipod because they listen to vinyl at home, or have an extensive CD collection and a 200 disc changer. hmmm. Judging people based on their music is as old as grunge revisionists, but it's so hard not to do.

I guess what this rant is about is how music changes. I can drive through any American city and find at least one "Oldies" radio station and listen to the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Who, etc. Those songs and artists were huge in the 60's and everyone listened to them because it was the only medium for receiving new music. The record companies gave them to the one radio station in the area and they played it and people bought it and people have been listening to that music for 40 years. But what about the music I'm into? How will Bright Eyes ever be remembered the way Bob Dylan was when 90% of Americans have never heard one of his songs (except for all of those people who saw Knocked Up). Every time I look at the iTunes top 10 albums, I'm amazed at how few I've even heard of. Who the fuck is Shwayze anyway? Most of those albums that all of those iTunes users are listening to, I'll never hear. Has music finally reached the utopia of a truly democratic release?