I was talking to my son yesterday about the “good old days” again. The subject was music and we got into a discussion about the music he likes vs. the kind I like. As we skipped back and forth between tracks on our respective devices – I on my iPad, he on his iTouch – I had to laugh about my life again and how the world around me seems to mirror it.
I say this because I sometimes wish my life was more like an iPod and less like an LP. For those of you too young to remember LPs, they were giant CDs that had to be flipped over in the middle of the songs. If you were lucky, you got one with about 12 tracks on it, six to a side, unless you bought an early album by Chicago, Steppin’ Wolf or the Grateful Dead and then you may only get one or two songs on a side.
Today, the concept of the album is long gone. With digital music, you can assemble your own order of songs. You can even flit between bands. But back in the day, you put a stack of LPs on the turntable and got whatever the band wanted you to hear. If you wanted to hear something else, you had to delicately lift the arm up and gently lower it onto the next track. You had to be careful, though, because you could easily scratch the record, ruining it.
It was often more trouble than it was worth, of course, particularly if you wanted to listen to a different song on a different album. Rather than going through the trouble of changing the LP or, if you were more well to do, click the Eject lever to let the next LP drop down on the previous one (scratching both of them), you just let it play.
There was a basic problem with this, of course. Inevitably, you bought the LP for one or two songs you liked on it. You probably heard them on the radio. But the LP had 10 other songs on it, some of which didn’t deserve to be aired on radio, let alone, be etched into grooves on your LP.
Many of these songs are highly forgettable. I know this because in 1966, if you wanted to get the Mamas & the Papas “Monday Monday” and “California Dreamin,” you had to sit through the insipid “Do You Wanna Dance” and a really odd choice, a cover of “Spanish Harlem”. Small wonder why people got high back then. They had to do it to get through crappy tracks of their LPs.
Today, of course, you don’t have to do this. You can just purchase these two hits and pair them with Loving Spoonful’s “Summer In the City” and “Happy Together” by the Turtles in iTunes. Screw the concept album.
As I said, sometimes I wish I could have a life like this. But I am stuck with an conceptual LP kind of life. I guess we all are. Some of the tracks are great, others suck. They bring you down right when you thought life was looking up. Just when you’re in the groove, rocking along in life, along comes a track on the LP of life that is a real downer.
You can’t fast forward. You can’t eject. You can’t even lift the arm and risk scratching the LP. You’re stuck listening to the entire track and it seems like an eternity before it is done. It can be a broken heart, a lost love, a tragedy where the singer talks for some reason in the middle of an otherwise pretty good song… you know the ones:
You know someone said that the world’s a stage
And each must play a part.
Fate had me playing in love, you as my sweet heart.
Act one was when we met, I loved you at first glance
You read your line so cleverly and never missed a cue
Then came act two, you seemed to change and you acted strange
And why I’ll never know.
You so wish you could just hit the FF button in life like you could in the cassette days or the arrow on your iPod now and get through that track that isn’t working for you.
I know that in my own life I’ve had some pretty sucky tracks. Lots of them about loss, lost loves, heart wrenching breakups, fights, being lost (physically and metaphorically), hangovers, regret… And there’s nothing I can do about them, except endure every horrific note as they play themselves out.
But thinking about it further, I’m not sure I would want to fast forward through the bad tracks. As I play them over in my mind, they weren’t so bad. They just took some getting used to. I still don’t like some of them as much as others, but the general concept of my life’s work isn’t so bad.
I guess that just like those old LPs, my life isn’t meant to be played in an edited version. It’s not supposed to be broken up into easily digestible bits and pieces. You have to go through it from start to finish, even when it’s filled with pops and scratches, and just learn to love the whole thing.
My only hope is that as I get older, I don’t mistakenly leave the damn thing in the sun too long. While some people will readily accuse me of being warped already, I don’t want them to have any proof.
Out on the Treasure Coast, Out on the Treasure Coast (sorry, I’m skipping again),
– Robb