Listen:A while ago I decided to abandon what little hope I had left for modern rock radio. (Whose dick is Three Days Grace sucking so that I have to hear their glossy bullshit ten times a day?) I thought at this point in my life I was finally old enough to listen to and appreciate jazz. So I bought a Miles Davis record. Shortly after that I decided that although I was old enough to "dig" the music I was listening to, I didn't yet believe that I was boring enough. (Thanks a lot, Kerouac.)
So here I am.
A week ago I decided to buy the fourth LP by the monumentally minimalist noise trio, Shellac, entitled "Excellent Italian Greyhound." I haven't found a better example of rock music that resembles jazz music. Their music is sparse and drawn out, their rhythms more than occasionally depart from the annoyingly routine 4/4 time signature and subsequently their songs take on arbitrary, almost linear structures, as if they take the listener from Point A but then must go on some uncharted journey to discover the location of Point B.
But my discovery of rock music that successfully quells my disdain for anything sonically mundane isn't the point of this post. This is: after opening the record I was happy to see that it included a copy of the album on compact disc.
For years I've been saying to anybody who cared to listen (and more who didn't) that all vinyl albums should come with a separate digital copy, either in the form of a CD or a free digital download. That is, they should if the recording industry wants to do anything other than shoving its head up its ass to pull up the steady decline of overall album sales over the last decade. Right now this has got to be the best way to modernize vinyl and revitalize the creative output of album-oriented genres like punk rock.
Also, on a sensory level, providing both formats of the album--digital and analog--makes Shellac's music, often brash and difficult to understand upon a first listening, much more palatable and portable. Let me explain.
Four songs in particular, across Shellac's 38-song catalog, are longer than seven minutes: "House Full of Garbage," "Didn't We Deserve A Look At You The Way You Really Are," "The End of Radio" and "Genuine Lulabelle." In punk rock seven minutes is an eternity, and its listeners are hardly patient. Furthermore, two of those songs are the first track of their respective albums.
"The End of Radio," the first track on Excellent Italian Greyhound, is a great example. Listening to music on vinyl is great experience, unless you have a song like this. It becomes apparent after listening to it for the first three minutes that the song's creators had a vastly different artistic intention than they did for the song that follows it, the up-tempo, riff-tastic "Steady As She Goes." It is with songs precisely like these that even the most uppity of rock nerds like myself thank our digital age for the invention of track selection. If right now you're saying, "Just count the record grooves, dipshit," then you haven't seen the lines on this album and are still completely unfamiliar with the music in question.
Now, with both formats for the price of one, when that full moon comes out and you're finally ready to dive into "Genuine Lulabelle" or "House Full of Garbage," you can feel free, pal! But if you find yourself getting ready to go to work and you only have time for "Spoke" it's still right at your fingertips. The possibilities are endless.
And if you're like me and know the damage that oppressive Florida heat can do to vinyl, I'm willing to bet you appreciate a nice, reliable, digital back-up as well.
