Friday, February 04, 2005
I'M A BIG PROPONENT of the element of surprise. You can't tickle yourself. And so every possible scheme involving MP3 collections or DVD collections or whatever is destined for failure, or at least dissatisfaction. It's one thing to be able to play "Sister Golden Hair" by America whenever I want to. It's quite another to experience the joy of happening upon someone else choosing to play it, especially for a mass audience. This is where really good radio, which these days pretty much means satellite radio, coems in.
That '70s guilty pleasure was probably a bad example. My better example comes from the next best thing to a really good radio station -- a CD I burned myself months ago but forgot. And it's on such a CD that I heard a track from an album that, if you have any faith at all in my taste, you must own. I'm talking about "High Land, Hard Rain" by Aztec Camera. This is a group that, much like the Cranberries a decade later, had one great album in it and not much else. It was fronted by Roddy Frame, who I believe was 17 years old when the band got together, and maybe 19 when this album came out. It's great stuff -- every single track.
That '70s guilty pleasure was probably a bad example. My better example comes from the next best thing to a really good radio station -- a CD I burned myself months ago but forgot. And it's on such a CD that I heard a track from an album that, if you have any faith at all in my taste, you must own. I'm talking about "High Land, Hard Rain" by Aztec Camera. This is a group that, much like the Cranberries a decade later, had one great album in it and not much else. It was fronted by Roddy Frame, who I believe was 17 years old when the band got together, and maybe 19 when this album came out. It's great stuff -- every single track.
