Musical Youth

The internet and iPod has totally changed the way I listen to music. Rewind a few years and all I had was a cassette Walkman and probably two cassettes – one in the machine and one in my pocket. If I was pioneering the pirate spirit and had copied some CDs that might mean four whole albums to listen to. Because of that I tended to bond to whole records. Even the ones I wasn't keen on, simply because: what choice did I have? With such limited supplies and only radio, TV and magazines to rely on, I didn't really get to experiment much. So I repeated the same old tapes over and over again. To this day I'm not sure if some music genuinely grew on me or whether there was a Stockholm Syndrome thing going on.

Now with my 'pod and the internet, I spend days drifting through a indeterminate haze of noise, picking off the bits I like. Browsing blogs and collecting up whatever passes, like stones on a beach; afraid to put it down, unsure of whether I'll ever find anything like it again. I tend to bond more, now, to individual songs rather than artists. In fact my attention span for albums is all but gone. Where before I'd listen to a crap tape because, a) it cost me £8.99 and, b) it was all I had. Now I'm always on shuffle or playlists – my own personal radio show. I'm not saying it's better or worse, it's just the way it is.