mp3 hain na!

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“Why are you buying music CD’s when you can download the same stuff from the net for free?” is a question that is much asked of those of us who buy music off the shelf.

Yes, music these days is available on the net; quite a lot of it and most of it is free. In fact on the web, the same song has easily accessible multiple renditions by the same artist and/ or the same song sung by many artistes. I love listening to how different people sing the same song. “Ain’t no Sunshine (when she’s gone)” by Bill Withers (Just as I Am, 1971) is one such song. Covers by artistes such as Michael Jackson (as the 12 year old lead singer of the Jackson 5), Lenny Kravitz, Issac Hayes, The Temptations, Ziggy Marley are some of the covers in my collection. Likewise, I have discovered six renditions of “Black” by Pearl Jam- one of my favorites and possibly my vote for the greatest Pearl Jam number along with “Alive”, (Ten, 1991). The six renditions span the original, live versions, acoustic versions and one which is totally crowd-chanted. And yes it has been the net which has allowed me these discoveries.

But all this still comes a close second to actually buying a CD, unsealing its plastic, opening the sleeve booklet, smelling the paper and only then popping the CD in the player/ computer, while reading what is written in the sleeve booklet (lyrics, thank you’s , who-dunnit’s et al). This has been a ritual since the era of the now-redundant Audio Cassette, and I know people who did this with the Vinyl LP records. I wonder how this can happen with an mp3 collection. The question is not “does it have to happen so?” (since it cannot, unless it is a CD of mp3’s), rather “why doesn’t it happen so?”. Perhaps it is nostalgia.

Some CD’s purchased today triggered waves of nostalgia of what had been debated as ‘pop vs rock’, ‘hip’, ‘cool’, ‘classic’, ’tuned-in’ and were nevertheless definitely educative because they were discovered in the years gone by, along with friends with whom there is no contact today despite online social networking; Needless to say, the waves have been absent whilst hearing the same numbers in the mp3 format.

1– Madonna: The Immaculate Collection (1990)- Madonna, before she became the Diva, had an excellent voice to make one’s feet tap. La Isla Bonita is my first ever Madonna song (“ Just like I’d never gone I knew the song..”). Like a Prayer is perhaps the best use of mixed metaphor equating prayer and love in a sinfully imaginative manner; the song is one of the reasons for my love of the English language.

2- Metallica: The Black Album (1991)- Metallica, to me is synonymous with Vikas, T-shirt painting with Metallica skulls and script, swooping down on Rolling Stone magazine from the raddi-walas from Colaba to Vile Parle and subscribing to Rock Street Journal (RSJ). All this while in school before the 10^th Std!

And then there is Nothing Else Matters. Really…nothing else matters. Prophetic enough for me.

3- In Time: The Best of REM (2003)- has some firsthand insight into the band’s thoughts on songs like What’s the Frequency Kenneth (Kedyboy, I hope you are reading this in Amrikka), Man on the Moon, and Everybody Hurts (“ This song doesn’t really belong to us anymore; it belongs to everybody who has ever gotten any solace from it”- Peter Buck).

4- Red Hot Chili Peppers: Greatest hits (2003). One of those groups which has a Philosopher for its Bass Guitarist. In the cover sleeve booklet we have Michael “Flea” Balzary going “Hello, I should preface this writing by letting you know that I know nothing about anything…” , “If there were four different poles on the earth, we would all be from an opposite one” (about the co-members) and later on “…Firstly, we are nothing but insignificant specks of s@#t, pawns in a cosmic spiritual realm where our universe is nothing but a dot of crusty sm#@%a; and secondly, we work…when we could be gallivanting around spending our dough, we sit in a room and think about b flats and c sharps and tempos and grooves and textures and laying back and pushing and new ways of harmonizing with each other” (about achieving success). And there is Under the Bridge, which is perhaps one of those awesome songs that describe many things, the City being one.

5- On an Island: David Gilmour (2006). Whenever there is David Gilmour, it is necessary to speak of his alter-ego Roger Waters. Roger Waters came out with Amused to Death after he decided to separate from Pink Floyd, leaving David Gilmour to (arguably) carry on the mantle of the ‘Pink Floyd sound and Music’. The whole (Pink Floyd) resurrects as a sum of its Parts (Waters, Gilmour) and that is my catalyst for discovering music by these guys. It has happened with Velvet Revolver (Guns n Roses minus Axl Rose plus Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots). Needless to say, in all cases except Coverdale-Page (Whitesnake/ Deep Purple + Led Zeppelin), the sum of parts have never added up, but they have revealed much about why these people have been a part of some of the greatest Rock music on Earth.

By simply opening the cover of a CD, there is all this and much much more. And the waves begin all over again each time. It is like opening a penned down diary.

mp3’s…?