The River Is Where I Am

"The sea refuses no river
Whether stinking and rank
Or red from the tank
Whether pure as a spring
There's no damned thing stops the poem
The sea refuses no river
And this river is homeward flowing"

Pete Townshend, "The Sea Refuses No River" from All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes.

When I first started purchasing and collecting music, I bought vinyl albums exclusively. The audio quality was superior to cassettes, if one could ignore the surface noise and occasional needle skipping, and albums were afforable and readily available (as opposed to the reel-to-reel tapes preferred by wealthy audiophiles).

The experience of the vinyl album is forever lost. The present youthful generation will never experience, nor readily understand, the ritual of opening an album, placing needle to virgin vinyl and spending the better part of an hour reverently soaking in the inaugural playing of the latest addition to your collection. Nor will future generations have any understanding of gazing into the album's cover art or reading along with the lyrics on the inner sleeve. I have fond memories of journeying to the record store and losing afternoons and evenings exploring my latest treasures. These experiences are implanted upon my memory and have informed my approach to my own work. Unfortunatley, the assumptions that I have made about my prospective audience based upon my own perceptions of the ritual of music listening may have complicated my process.

I have had an interesting experience recently that has opened my eyes. After not having a working turntable since, oh, about 1988, I have somewhat romanticized both the process and the experience of listening to vinyl albums. I recently purchased a turntable and special-ordered a quality stylus in order to transfer some of my old albums - the ones that never made it to CD - into a digital format. All I can say is, that after almost a quarter century of enjoying the pristine audio quality of a CD, my old vinyl albums that I treasured and adored and so looked forward to hearing once again... sounded like complete shit.

Oh, I cleaned them up and did everything I could to reduce static electricity, but even the most spotless albums revealed the limitations of the medium. I know that there are people out there who swear by the alleged "warmth" of vinyl and preach condescendingly about the superiority of analog versus digital when it comes to music, but they weren't hearing what I was hearing through an extremely high quality set of headphones.

The experience made me start thinking of other things that I may have romanticized about music. And I started questioning some of the presumptions that I have been making about my own work.

I love albums. Some people think of albums as being synonymous with vinyl LP's. That's not what I mean. Albums are to songs what gallery exhibitions are to paintings. There are themes and common threads to be found that unite the individual pieces. There is much thought that goes into the placement of each piece within the context of the others. The concept of an album being more than a mere haphazard collection of songs is one that I readily embrace. It is easy to point to specific albums as evidence in favor of the "album-as-a-whole-greater-than-the-sum-of-it's-parts" aesthetic. Sure, there are concept albums such as Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" or the Beatles'"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," but sometimes the conhesiveness of an album as a complete work doesn't wear it's badge on its sleeve. Think about Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks," Miles Davis' "Kind Of Blue" or U2's "Achtung Baby." The idea of picking just a few tracks from those records and never hearing the rest seems like a shame. Knowing Marvin Gaye's song "What's Going On" without knowing the entire album (of the same name) seems downright criminal.

And yet, I can't remember the last time that I was able to sit down and have THE ALBUM EXPERIENCE. It was easy to make time for such rituals in my teens and twenties, but I just don't see it as a realistic option anymore. Who has time? I have to squeeze my listening experience into my life wherever it will fit - usually in the car while en route from point A to point B. Any cohesiveness that an album might hold tends to get lost when the experience is interrupted five or ten times before you even get through the CD.

And if this is my experience even with albums that I really look forward to getting, how could I assume that the experience of my family and friends - let's face it, my only potential audience - would be any different? The era of the iPod has reduced the significance of albums further. The public can now purchase only the songs it wants, or knows, or has somehow been exposed to, without making the investment in THE ALBUM. The concept of an album as a conhesive entity seems shattered in the present day - an archaic, unwelcome remnant of the primitive pre-digital era. And many albums being produced now seem to buy into the new ethos of an album being - sigh - an almost random collection of songs whose only thematic link seems to be that they are being performed by the same artist.

One of the most enjoyable experiences I have ever had with my music occurred when a group of my friends organized a listening party for my album "Exile By Degrees." Upon finishing the album, we all sat down in the living room of my friends' apartment and listened to the album from beginning to end. I was pretty much in a cold sweat as the album played, as some of the songs were quite personal, even potentially revealing. I felt vulnerable. And I wasn't sure if the somber, introspective tone of some of my new material was anything that anybody would be interested in. It certainly wasn't what anybody was expecting from me.

But they GOT IT. And they seemed to like it. Within a few weeks, I received the finest compliment about my work that I had ever heard - that the tapes that I had distributed were being listened to simply because they enjoyed it. Not because of some imagined perfunctory obligation to listen to it just because they knew me, but because they actually liked the music well enough to listen to it privately even when I wasn't around.

Now that was cool.

But, like I said, life is different now. My friends and family are scattered across the globe, making the notion of such a "listening party" pretty much impossible. And even if we all lived in the same city, who can commit an evening to sit down and listen to a new CD? I know I can't, and it would be selfish of me to ask that of my friends. Oh, I've entertained the thought, I must admit. I've even considered having a big party upon release of the CD, maybe even a live concert to introduce the new material. In my imagination, I envision a big "this-is-your-life" reunion of all of my friends coming out to watch the concert, hear the new material, and hang out for a weekend. It would be great.

But come on. I live all the way out in Wyoming. A hop, skip and a jump from NOWHERE THAT ANY OF MY OLD FRIENDS LIVE. And if I have a hard time getting away to see friends and relatives getting married because I live so damned far away, I surely don't have any right to ask people to come all the way out to Wyoming just to celebrate my little hobby.

But apart from that, what about the album? In my mind, I see the album as a cohesive work. But I seriously doubt that anybody, if they're as busy as I am, will get to experience it as a whole piece. But my inability to let go of the album concept has kept me thinking within the limited parameters that tell me that, essentially, I can't release the individual tracks until the whole thing is complete. At most, I could release one track as sort of a teaser (a "single," if you will), accompanied by perhaps a non-album track (what we used to call a "B - side"), with the rest of the album coming out in its completed form later. If I sacrifice the notion of an album, I am free to release songs whenever I finish them. The downside is that I miss out on the satisfaction of having completed an ALBUM. Additionally, I would prefer that you have a CD in your hand - a tangible manifestation of the music, complete with lyrics and pictures and everything, rather than a mere title and a button to click on some screen. Pressing up CD's and sending them will cost a few bucks. Posting songs online costs nothing. But, to me at least, the tangible quality of a CD carries a certain value, perhaps a certain dignity, that seems absent in an MP3 file.

And maybe I'm overthinking this, and maybe none of this really matters that much. But I can't help it. I want to make an ALBUM, but I wonder if the time for albums has passed, and if I'm clinging to concepts that are doing nothing but delaying ther process by making it more difficult for me to get my music into your ears.

Any advice you might have would be welcome.