it's the space between

I grew up listening to vinyl. One by one, I added to my record collection, and played my favorite albums over and over. Now there was a thing this technology would do. Any little scratch in the vinyl would cause it to skip and the record would repeat a musical phrase over and over again. Sometimes you could stop it by stomping hard on the floor, but mostly you had to get up and tap the needle arm. It would reach the point that the skips became a part of the song. To this day, there songs from Janis Joplin's "Got Dem Old Kozmic Blues Again" that startle me when I heard them blasting right through the place where it was supposed to get stuck.

In the same way, record listeners grew to expect that songs would come on in a certain order, after a three or four second hiss of silence. That was their proper order. Some musicians created albums with this in mind. Some people still prefer to listen to music this way. I have to admit, I am not one of them.

That was always the appeal of radio, after all. The fortuitious playing of the song you really liked, or needed at that moment. The juxtaposition: both those songs mentioned pumpkins and it was like totally mind-blowing!!!

I tried listening to an old mix tape I had made (it was in the car and there was nothing but commercials and pledge appeals on the radio) and found myself listening just to hear what the next song was, rather than to enjoy the current song. I realized it then. It's the juxtapositions I like. The connections. The links I make in my own mind, when one song comments on another and turns it upside down. Does that mean I'm just an unreformed modernist, shoring fragments against my ruin? Or too post-modern to bother actually listening to a simple song?