By Brian Smith
My friend went to the thrift sale hosted by the Junior League of Savannah on Oct. 3 in the downtown Civic Center. There, he bought an Akai M10 – a quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape recorder. $15 got him the machine and a single tape containing what turns out to be the potential rotational material for one of today’s oldies stations. Essentially, it’s a super-long mixtape.
I’ve sat with this machine a few times since its purchase. The seller informed us that he bought the machine in Vietnam circa 1969, and that it had been housed in a barn ever since. But, it still works. Every listen, it spits out more uninterrupted hit singles from the ‘50s and ‘60s. One notable and recurrent track is “Last Kiss,” the hit 1964 teen tragedy pop rock single by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers.
“Last Kiss” didn’t come out as part of a full album. It was cut as a single, released as a single and played as a single – much like the other songs on the tape that came with the machine, and much like most pop songs of that era. People bought 7-inch singles and played one after another, or stacked them up in a certain order and let the turntable play them through.
During the same time singles reigned supreme in the pop world, long-playing records were the standard form of jazz artists like Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Freddie Hubbard. Most jazz records from that era were accompanied by a thoughtful interpretation on the back of the large, art-covered sleeve (something singles also lacked) as if the album as a whole should be considered as a work of art.
In the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s, long-playing records began to take over popular music. Bands dug the huge, gatefold artwork possibilities and looked at their full records as a form of expression. Radio play and popularity determined singles, which were released – but the emergence of B-side singles and EPs often came behind, or in promotion of a long-playing record.
The single faded, and LPs were being recognized as art. Musicians and bands released a group of songs together and intended the listener to experience that group as a whole – as a single work. The vinyl LP forces an active listening experience – one must drop the needle, flip the record, drop the needle and remove the needle over the course of an hour or so. Ron Popeil wouldn’t approve – you can’t set it and forget it.
I’m a major advocate of active listening. If musicians are considered artists, their work is art – something the listener should be aware of, analyze and interpret. Although full albums are still the majority of mainstream music, the comeback of the single has arrived through digital technology. The iTunes store is the number-one proponent of the “new” single – individual songs are pulled from full albums and sold for 99 cents. Listeners buy the tracks they like, slap the files in their library and put the whole compilation on shuffle. Now, listeners are leaving their experience to chance, and aren’t subject to an active listening process. The term “background music” comes to mind.
The convenience of digital music media lends to a passive and eventually un-artful experience. Popular artists and their labels realize the strength of single sales thriving once again, and focus on releasing more successful singles than artful albums.
What’s left to creativity once the listening experience becomes passive? The answer is mixtapes. The extremely popular and recently shut-down Web site Muxtape is the most recent example. Users upload mp3s of their choosing and build creative, often thematic playlists – the listener is now active in a different manner, analyzing how other listeners interact with music themselves.
While I’m sitting by the reel-to-reel player, I can’t help but think of Muxtape. Whoever recorded (ripped) 6 hours worth of hit singles back in the early ‘60s and built this playlist considered its order and creatively made the potentially passive, randomized listening experience of the early jukebox into an experience very similar to listening to someone’s Muxtape.
This apparent pattern, this ebb and flow of music formats and listening experience makes me wonder: Will the long-playing album make a triumphant and overwhelming return, much like its beginning in the ‘70s? Maybe a new form of media not yet describable will overtake this 99-cent-single era and bring back artful music to the mainstream audience? Or maybe more emphasis will be placed on the live performance, where many bands currently make the most profit. Whatever the future holds, this potential pattern suggests it’ll be good.
Illustration by Colleen Sanders
