Its no revelatory proclamation to state that music has changed over the past decade. Bums on the side of the street can tell. Fetuses can see the differences. Oak tree root systems know. So, this isn't some diatribe on the changing scene of music and how it affects our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. This is a remembrance piece on my firsts in audible entity.
My first cassette tape: This is hard to remember exactly. However, I do distinctly remember my first cassette tape player. A birthday present from my Uncle Bill, I remember unwrapping the large present and staring wide eyed at a box with a photo of a bright yellow radio cassette player. Picking my chin off the floor, I demanded to know if the box was for holding the contents depicted on the side or merely a place holder box for something less enthralling. It was the former.
As such is the case with memory, things are often forgotten, I don't remember if this was my first cassette tape, but I do know the one I remember most distinctly was a Nickelodeon Pete & Pete tape. It was bright orange (like all things Nickelodeon) and had the theme song in various remixes. Closely following this archaic music memory, is that of my Ace Of Base tape. We threw down to some
All That She Wants on the grade school recess court.
My first CD: This I remember well. My Dad purchased a bright red Corvette to commemorate my birth (or so goes the age-old justification for his sport's car bliss). Car buying must have been different in the 80s, as years later we were mailed an anniversary present of a beach themed CD. In the bygone eras of consumer contention, Chevrolet sought to maintain our pleasantries with bribes of goodies and trinkets - thus the birth of my first CD. In hindsight, I am sure this was a sampler CD of various beachy tunes, but to my young ears - every song on the disc was by The Beach Boys.
Looking back on it now, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that nothing included was actually wailed by a tanned Brian Wilson - but to me, the water and sand scene on the cover meant that this was my quintessential Beach Boys CD as awarded to me by being an elite Corvette owner. Never mind that the shiny red car that I was frightened into believing would replace me as the golden child should I scratch it, would one day be covered in mold and soot in the back of a tractor shed - this brand new, shiny CD with no side flipping or tape reel to carefully maintain meant that I was
in. I was cool. Different. New. Better. I remember taking my CD to school and showing how the back was like a mirror. I pointed out how thin it was and made everyone look at the Corvette symbol next to the beach landscape. My first CD marked a turning point in my view of what was possible. It wasn't just a CD to me, this was a simulacrum of change. This was the first time I was conscious of progress. My personal evidence that life evolves and shifts to provide with newer, better, more efficient systems - all encapsulated in tangible Beach Boy hi-fi.
My first burned CD of stolen music: In every young person's life they have one person that opens their minds to the awesomeness of music. For me, that person not only awakened me to musicality but also to criminality - as my Uncle Bill was the source for my very first CD of stolen digital music. I remember Napster as the syringe and shitty 2000s music as the heroin. My CD, which my Uncle named
April's Fav's From Five Minutes Ago and printed on a sticker cover of rainbow pink swirls, included songs like Britney Spear's Lucky, Backstreet Boy's Bye Bye Bye, and nearly everything Slim Shady. This wasn't just a CD it was a
CD-R, which meant that I could alter and rearrange the playlist before it hit the polycarbonate - and that was amazing. The burner was a 1x and it took eighty minutes to burn what would become a lifetime of crappy music.
My first digital music player: Unlike CDs and tapes, which are normally acquired singularly, digital music is mostly "gotten" in swarms - and I can't begin to remember my first personal download or my leading iTunes acquisition. But what I do remember is my first iPod purchase. During my first solo vacation to Pittsburgh, my Aunt took me to Circuit City, where clad with my spending cash from Dad, I purchased my first iPod Mini. It was bright pink and utterly amazing. As a dumb teeny-bopper, I almost instantly felt cooler and more important (and thus the marketing genius of Apple emerges) because I had something expensive and shiny, something that needed taken care of and safeguarded.
In retrospect it was a terrible electronic. The screen was awful - it didn't backlight any better than a calculator and almost needed a daily reboot to remain working properly. It was a god-awful metallic pink color with ungainly thickness for such a basic electronic, and it weighed (not a lot) but more than necessary compared to what cellphones and music players are capable of today. I kept it for a while before moving onto many more replacements, Nanos, Shuffles, Zunes, full size iPods... - eventually passing this sad player onto one of my friends for gym use.
Now I have music files stashed on hard drives, thumb drives, iPhones, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and soon iCloud, Google Music Beta and Amazon mp3. I get free music sent to me via e-mail from Spin and Paste. My car has satellite radio, its own hard drive, an iPhone/iPod hook up, and HD radio channels - whatever the fuck that is.. and the trend of music progress continues to truck on.
Although music has changed a lot, I haven't. I get just as excited over getting a new free sampler mix as I did over my first batch of stolen music. And when I got my invite to Google Music Beta, I was just as intrigued as when I got that yellow boombox.
