What Is Lost?

I still have 2 full compact disc cases, probably about 300-400 CDs.  I hadn’t pulled a CD off those shelves in a couple of years, until a few days ago.  My CD player died years ago, but I still have a DVD player (and tons of DVDs) that never gets used.  Luckily, you can play a CD in a DVD player.
OK, for all of you youths: A compact disc is a piece of ancient technology.  You probably find in in your parents or grandparents houses.  They’re small, shiny discs that held your music before streaming became a thing.
I have to admit: It’s cool to think of a song, search for it on iTunes, and voila! The song starts playing.

But, successive generations will never know the joy of opening a thoughtfully designed CD package.  There will be no album notes to read (There’s Genius.com to explain everything), and folks will probably give you a confused look upon hearing that people still win Grammys for them.

The packaging was part of the experience of enjoying and engaging with an artist’s work.  It was a gateway before you pressed play and heard the first notes of the first song.  It drew you in deeper as you looked at the song titles, the credits, and read the notes as the album played.  In some cases, like Hotel Costes, Etage 3, you got a whole foldout.  It was one more thing to see, touch and experience.  For an album, it went towards the overall #mood.

But if that’s not part of your experience, is it really lost?  I mean, if you never experienced all that, do you really miss it?  How would you know, especially if all of that wasn’t part of the way you experienced music?  I know there’s been somewhat of a resurgent interest in vinyl, but since I’ve never owned a turntable, I can’t talk about that.  And that’s a real bespoke experience that only a small slice of the people will explore.  But given the swing back towards analog (think paper, notebooks, fountain pens, and other handmade, tactile experiences), music may still have a toe in the physical world.

Older generations only call things lost because they remember them.  There’s very little nostalgia among the youth.  Of course, some things get rediscovered: You know, the way kids find items from their parents’ closets cool.  There is, after all, an entire “vintage” market.

Anyway, I take some small comfort in knowing that not all of the music I love is available on iTunes.  Some great albums never made the transition, so I’m glad I still have those shiny relics from the past (For example, it’s kinda criminal that iTunes doesn’t have 1994’s Stolen Moments: Red Hot & Cool, with the fantastic track “Flying High in The Brooklyn Sky” featuring Digable Planets, Meshell Ndegeocello, Wah Wah Watson and Lester Bowie).  

Oh, this Hotel Costes album? 

It came out a lifetime ago. In 2000.