Friday, January 21, 2011
Creamtastic Record Clubs, Listening Room [Let's Spend Some Time Together]
Posted by Steve Haruch on Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 4:02 PM
"Everyone, stop multi-tasking, sit down, open your ears and do some heavy listening."The set album this month was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. We sat in silence even as David Bowie's record was turned over to side two.
The seats were soft, someone had lit some incense. Some people closed their eyes, others nodded in rhythmic appreciation. There was a sense of being collectively submerged in Bowie's music.
"You're not even allowed to use the bathroom here, it's too noisy," says Ms Murphy.
I think this is a great idea — sitting together and listening to albums beginning to end — but it seems so forced to have a club with rules and stuff. No using the bathroom? What is this, Tiger Mom Record Night? And isn't getting high and listening to records technically multi-tasking?
Anyway, you know your dying art is dead when people form clubs to engage in the ancient spiritual rite of listening to an entire album, even the songs you may have missed out on otherwise because they're not very good. Maybe people just like forming clubs. Or maybe just having your friends post YouTube clips of songs in their Face-brooks (like streams, only shallower) doesn't have that same camaraderie-building-with-music power that sitting in the same physical space and listening to the same album does. I don't know. The other day I sent my friend in Seattle a digital copy of an album, and we texted each other while we were both listening to it. That sounds weird now that I'm typing it out, but we were listening to a record "together," because we can be together in different ways now. We can create spaces on the Internet like this one. (HT: Yewknee, whose room is here.)
Now, who wants to listen to some records?
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