Audiophile V2.0

When I was a kid, I was effectively obsessed with my mother's and brother's record collections. I can recall many a Saturday that I answered some strange genetic call to spread their hundreds of albums across the floor of the living room, shuffle them like some room-size game of three card monty, and then spend hours re-alphabetizing them in the failing light of the evening.

Call it some weird kind of Rainman-like OCD, but I did it frequently enough that I obviously got distinct satisfaction from it. In the process, I achieved near mastery in cataloging skills.

I also spent long hours perusing album art. Queen's Jazz (replete with foldout insert of 100 naked women on bikes), Average White Band, Ohio Players, Frank Zappa, Alan Parsons Project, The Wall...all of them have found some synaptic niche for apparent long-term storage.

As most kids eventually do, I began declaring my own musical preferences in high school. Pivoting on my hand-me-down interest in The Who and Elvis Costello, I rode the 80s through the English Beat, The Smiths, The Cure and, in college, ran headlong into the CD revolution. Sporting my own record collection of about 200 LPs, I initially fought adoption of compact discs. Players were about $300 back then, and each CD about $18. But soon, the arrival of a remarkable marketing phenomenon compelled my compliance: the bonus track. What's this, extra tracks not available anywhere else? Sign me up for the revolution. I distinctly recall three CDs putting me over the edge, each sporting bonus tracks. Despite the fact that I already owned the albums, I jumped at the opportunity to buy Living Color, Violent Femmes and Fine Young Cannibals. The rest is history.

Not long after I broke my digital cherry, I found myself buying discs with reckless abandon. For most of my last three years of college, I bought 3-5 discs a week. After school, my audio hedonism achieved compulsive dimensions. I got to the point where the mere mention of a band in Rolling Stone's Top 10 Alternative list sent me racing to the nearest record store like a black tar heroin addict seeking a fix. My compact disc collection reached goliath proportions by the time I was 25, fueled by bands that became my mainstay: Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, Rage Against the Machine, Charlatans UK, Robyn Hitchcock (and, yes, Elvis Costello.)

Marriage and fatherhood put the effective brakes on my music buying free-for-all. Which is probably a good thing because the advent of the MP3 era would surely see me in bankruptcy. I realize that good music still requires musicians to produce it, but the diversity of music and ease of access to it is astounding. I make no bones about my iPod addiction. I worship the little white box like some unknown Indonesian jungle tribe might marvel at a light bulb or a stick of gum. I travel with my 60GB soulmate virtually everywhere -- in the car, at home, at work, to the gym. I love that little faerie box, I tell you.

But one thing that's changed about my relationship to music has been the tactile component of it. When albums went to CD, the artwork became less tangible. Smaller. Less memorable. Sure, there were booklets with words and other sundry tidbits. And yes, I still spent many an obsessive night alphabetizing jewel cases. But now, particularly with MP3s and the prevalence of buying individual tracks, album art has become divorced of the musical experience. Music has become largely faceless, visually anonymous.

Last week, there was a turning point. iTunes 7.0 came out and, suddenly, there was a convergence of past and future. As if Steve Jobs felt the same sense of loss, iTunes now allows you to sort your songs and albums by cover art. You can now flip through virtual racks of albums with the same carefree bliss that you did as a six-year old. Admittedly, the cover art has been reduced to dithered JPEGs scavenged from Google and Amazon, but it still creates a connection (and keeps graphic artists in business, no doubt.) And with the assistance of digital file info, I have discovered dozens of levels of granular minutiae to consume myself with. I can assign genres, recording info, even lyrics to each track and then search and catalog them like a modern day monk.

Yes, that song has 98 beats per minute, yeah, definitely 98 beats per minute. Oh, time for Wapner.

I just find it extremely interesting to see how music enjoying and collecting has evolved so much over the past 20 years but, in the process, has come back around to the fundamental experience that seems so intrinsically important...and memorable.