It’s much, much easier to look cool on your blog than it is in real life.
By which I mean: look at my past listening page (lots of images, but don’t worry, I’ll wait until you come back). Now, if I had actually been hip to each of those albums when they came out, I’d be so hip that I’d have difficulty seeing over my own pelvis. In reality, most of those albums have been, for years, either “I’ve been meaning to get around to listening to that, but…” or “Sounds fun, but I can’t possibly right now…”
What’s changed all that is legal downloaded music. I can pay $0.99 a song at the Apple store and pick up all the songs I’ve ever wanted to listen to from college, high school and before, including the Sugarcubes, some Mazzy Star, Sinéad O’Connor, some Bauhaus, 10,000 Maniacs, American Music Club, etc. Or find all the stuff that I’ve discovered over the last few months listening to KEXP, including the Pernice Brothers, My Morning Jacket, Yo La Tengo, the New Pornographers, Loose Fur, Cat Power, the Reindeer Section…
And then there are all the guilty pleasures that can’t be gotten out of my head. Evidence point # only for tonight: the Ready for the World/Jets double album, Back to Back, inexplicably available from the Apple Music Store. Including “Oh Sheila,” “Crush on You,” “You Got It All (Over Him),” and of course “Digital Display.” You remember “Digital Display,” right? “Excuse me if I start to play… with your digital display…”
But I can choose not to put Ready for the World and the Jets on my blog. Except, of course, that I just did. So much for being hip.