Lamenting the death of the album

I’m on a quest.

In the last month, I joined the late 20th century and bought an mp3 player. I bought one of those $20 players from Walmart because I don’t believe in iPods.

OK, I do believe in iPods. I mean they’re a physical product. They play music. There is an entire iTunes culture that downloads particular songs. They are the hip music player to have, except for two things.

First, I don’t believe in spending more than $40 on anything that plays music. Don’t get me wrong, I like music, but spending more than $100 to have a machine that only plays music. Well, I draw the line there.

If I’m going to spend $100 on something, it better involve me eating, driving or watching television or movies.

My big problem with iPods really stems from iTunes. I blame it for killing the album.

Why should musicians make 12 reasonably different songs, if they can make one song, then repeat it 12 times with the different lyrics. Sometimes they don’t even bother to change the lyrics.  I’ll be listening to one song for 60 minutes.

Gone are the days of the B-side. Gone are the days of when I could like the fifth song on an album, which never got any radio play, but was still the best song on there. I can name half a dozen songs (“Anna Begins,” “Daria,” “King of Bedside Manor,” “Misery” and “Some Fantastic”) that were better than the hit songs from the albums (”Mr. Jones,” “The Distance,” “If I had $1,000,000,” “Minority” and “One Week.”)

No one even notices this happen. They still buy the one hit song and ignore the rest of the album, which makes me wonder why they even bother putting out an album. iTunes (along with Napster) has turned every band into a one-hit wonder.

So I’m on a quest.

I’m sure the album isn’t completely dead.

OK, I really want the album to still be alive.

Occasionally, I come across a band performing more than one song (Bowling for Soup comes to mind.) But I haven’t found anything “new” for at least a year now, and it doesn’t help most of my favorite bands either broke up or haven’t produced anything for a long time.

So I’m hunting the shelves in Hastings. I’m scouring the indie bands on cdbaby.com. I’m trying to find a new album that sounds like, well, an album.

Cameron Probert is the Columbia Basin Herald county reporter. Some times we think he clings to things or ideas a bit too long, like his car.