Posted 10:41 AM by Gene

Sorry to Volokh, but I'm beginning to wonder if the iPod crowd doesn't have the right idea after all. The solace of record collecting is the hard copy, with its cover art and disc art and liner notes; but increasingly the record companies are skimping on liner notes (for licensed reissues they'll often just print the original and frequently skimpy notes), and cover art is unimpressive in a jewel box, and though the CD is infinitely superior to the LP (whatever the audio geeks think) you're still stuck (as I am) with hundreds of CDs cluttering up your living space, and the need for racks to store them. PLUS many albums you listen to once, and never again, no matter how good they are; you just don't have the time to listen to them -- or the inclination. (I haven't even started buying DVDs yet. That's NEXT.)

And then there's the problem of buying music sound unseen, of relying on reputations, or the blurbs of news hacks, or your own base instincts. I just got through listening to an album of Scarlatti from the UK's Hyperion label, a very VERY good label, and after a relentless twelve-minute harpsichord solo I wanted to tear my hair out. I wish I could remember the writer who likened Baroque music to background music; it frequently says the same thing over and over again, and too often it's nothing. (There are a number of great works from the era, though, such as Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas.) It's not just Baroque; I often purchase from the all-too-similarly named Collectables and Collectors' Choice Music labels, and with them it's the second-tier big bands of the forties, bands that specialized in a very-heavy-baritone-sax-laden "sweet" music, bands that played exactly the same music the same way in 1947 as in 1939 (i.e., Dick Jurgens, or the unaccountably popular Orrin Tucker). Yet you must buy these albums, because you must buy records, because your intellectual curiosity demands it.

iPod fans keep theirs in a tiny box. Yes, I think they may have the right idea.

(Two recent listens I can recommend without reservation: the magnificent soundtrack of The Magnificent Seven, and this double-bill with Judy Garland.)