Music Downloads and Latenight Driving

I live in a world… correction, I am my own world, and perhaps there is a possibility that we share the same one. It is a world where music cannot only be acquired in LP’s, cellophane rapped CD’s, or internet downloads but in massive back ally downloads. Skreemr, Limewire, Filetube, BeeMP3, and grooveshark just to name a few provide not only streaming music, singles, albums, but also whole catalogs of music. I started to consider the value of this limitless supply of free music last night when I went for drive.

I won’t claim innocence when it comes to illegitimate downloads. I will say that I have far more legitimately paid for music then ever before on my laptop and iPod. Yes I am one of those iPod junkies. The click of the wheel, the endless album covers flipping past on the bright LCD screen, the little addictive games, and the endless shuffle of tunes that flow out through my head phones when I go jogging or for a late night drive. I love music so I love my iPod. Music is what saves us from ourselves; it’s what holds the night at bay. Enough with generalities for the moment, let’s return to my car ride.

I had just purchased The Hold Steady’s new album Heaven is Whenever, I was driving and lessoning and a set of lyrics hit home.

You can’t get every girl.

You’ll get the ones you love the best.

You won’t get every girl.  

You’ll love the ones you get the best.

I don’t think I could have ever written it so well. I don’t believe I could have ever summed up so much of my life in a single verse. I don’t know if it’s even true or not. I do know how corny it sounds coming off your computer screen right now. Or at least I know how corny it is coming off mine. That on a back road somewhere in rural Ohio I single verse of a song could do all that. Well it did.

                It makes me think of another song by Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint called The River in Reverse. There is a great verse there that also helps bring the world into focus for me:

So count your blessings when they ask permission

To govern with money and superstition

They tell you it's all for your own protection

'Til you fear your own reflection

But the times are passing from illumination

Like bodies falling from a constellation

An uncivil war divides the nation

So erase the tape on that final ape running down creation

Running down creation

I won’t try to come close to quoting Costello, I know better than that, but I remember hear him speak about what drove him to create music with a political tilt. He said something to the effect that he knew all the wrong people where lessoning and that nothing he said could change how the world was or even is. But that in light of it all he just felt the need to create, the need to push back.

It is music that drives me to push back. I know no one may ever read this blog. I don’t care. I create anyway. Music for so many seems to have become a commodity with little to no value. The idea of paying for music has become inconceivable for them. It’s not for me. Because I know that last night I paid nine dollars and ninety nine cents for an album. Then I waited and hour for it to download and went for a drive. And after all of that I found a single moment on back road in rural Ohio where everything finally made sense. That was worth a lot more then what I paid. The point you ask? Well maybe music is something that’s worth paying for, maybe when you have to work for it actually means something. Or maybe I’m full of shit. Take your pick…

Heaven Is Whenever   

The River in Reverse