Higher Than The Moon

Have a listen to St. Teresa by Joan Osborne.  Cool, eh?  Trippy video too.

Every time I play it, I think to myself, “Why did she never make another album after Relish?”  One great record, one overwhelming performance in Standing In The Shadows of Motown, then oblivion.

Starting a few months after Relish came out in 1995, I always looked in the Joan Osborne bin whenever I went browsing for CD’s – something I did often.  Always only the one album.

Eventually I gave up, and accepted that I was fated to repeat this sad question to myself every time I heard Joan Osborne.

Then a few weeks ago I remembered that after the album was released, this thing called the Internet exploded into our world, along with this really cool resource called Wikipedia.

So I finally looked up Joan Osborne in Wikipedia and discovered that she hadn’t disappeared at all.  In fact, she’s been very busy.

Damn!  Guess I got a bucketful of lost time to make up for.

The History of Cool

We tend to have a schizophrenic relationship with technology; we either think something is really cool, or we take it for granted.  Or maybe one viewpoint evolves into the other, as illustrated by Rolling Stone’s 24 Inventions That Changed Music.

From Thomas Edison’s phonograph in 1877 to the microphone to LP to the Compact Disc to the Internet  …  they’re all there.

It’s interesting to trace the evolution of media from wax cylinders through tape and vinyl to CD’s and computer drives.  Even more interesting, is to consider the evolution of playback devices from the Victrola to the cassette deck to the CD player to the iPod/phone.

The romance is connected to the playback device, of course.  I still remember the big honking furniture cabinets that housed the stereos of my youth.  More importantly, I remember how much I loved my first transistor radio.  It gave me freedom, independence, and the power to live in my own culture.  The transistor radio is probably the single biggest factor in the dominance of rock and roll.

That said, I remember how badly we all wanted a Walkman the moment they came out.  By then it was mug’s game though.  CD’s, mp3’s, iPods … I don’t miss my cassette tapes but I do get tired of replacing and re-organizing my media every few years. 

The stated theme of the list is recording and playing back music, so it’s more than a little curious that the Marshall amplifier is on the list.  Sure, that amp is the most famous, but it doesn’t relate to recorded music any more than the first Les Paul guitar or the first effects pedals.

The dates of some of the innovations are interesting, too.  When you think about how fast we moved from cassettes to CD’s to mp3’s, it’s amazing to realize the LP was invented in 1931 but 78’s were sold into the mid-50’s.  The biggest surprise, though is the vocoder, invented in 1940 for military use!  Take that, Daft Punk.

Status: Single

Thank goodness for iTunes and other music download sites (not so much the ones where piracy prevails). Otherwise it would be hard to get a single.

Back in the dark ages, when vinyl was king, singles ruled. If you liked a song, you bought the single. You only bought an album if you were really a big fan or if you had confidence that most of the songs on the album would be just as good as the single.

I got burned more than a few times. Everyone did.

By the late 70's, when tape was king, singles had virtually disappeared. CD's put an end to the idea once and for all.

Don't know about you, but I started buying less. A whole CD for one song? No way. So if I liked a song, I waited for the next album/CD - and the next one and the next one and the next one after that. Assuming I remembered who was who and the band stayed together long enough to put out a greatest hits - and I still cared - eventually I would buy a CD knowing I was getting value for money.

That is, unless the record company ripped you off by inserting a live version of one of the songs to try and force you to by two CD’s.

Sheesh!

So thank goodness you can now buy singles. You can always by the whole CD when you know - you know - you really like everything by the artist, but it's nice to get away from that "yuck-why-did-I-buy-this?" feeling.

Here's to singles!