End of an Error

As I sit here (finally) burning our CD collection to go on the iPod, I'm struck by the one key way that buying songs through iTunes or other vendors will change our approach to music: Not being able to make amends for a particularly egregious music purchasing error.

You know what I'm talking about. You had those albums, tapes, or CDs in your collection--and you swiftly donated them to a needy friend, neighbor, or Goodwill. My sisters bought me a Menudo album when I was 9, and I was mortified upon receiving it. I knew better, even then. I even feared even putting it in the garbage, lest a neighbor my age see it on trash day and suspect wrongly my musical inclinations.

If you didn't live in the Baltimore area between the ages of 14-25 in the 1980s and 1990s, then you were deprived of Record & Tape Traders, which dealt in all sorts of music genres across the main mediums of vinyl, tape, and CD. It was here that you could make amends for those musical transgressions that plagued your collection. They would take from you the Yoko Ono, Gary Numan, or Hooked on Classics albums that you preferred to anonymously purge from your life. In turn, they would give you a little walk-about money that you used to atone for those sins with other musical selections that soothed your soul.

During college in the early 1990s, it was clear that most everyone agreed on the transgressions that were particularly in need of forgiveness: Aerosmith's "Pump," Hootie and the Blowfish, and the Spin Doctors all spring to mind as music you could buy by the bushel. (At some point, even R&TT had to cut off their buyback for these albums.) What always made me curious was how I managed to score most of my Beatles collection, a Robert Johnson 2-CD set, and some other terrific jazz from Record & Tape's generous bins. Who could possibly resell these treasures? Someone with terrible taste? A music lover down on his luck who couldn't make rent that month? Some teen punk ripping off his parents' CD collection to get money for booze for the weekend? I still wonder.

As we move toward using online sources for our sole music acquisition, music lovers certainly lose out on the comaraderie and banter that could be found while making selections in the music store. Even the songs played in-store occasionally inspired purchases (Cat Empire, Fugazi, and Chemical Brothers), and we don't get that incidental/accidental exposure to music if we're browsing the genres and artists that we already know. One can certainly argue that, at 99 cents a pop, it's easy to try on new artists and song styles, even if they turn out to be poor choices in the end. But what of the redemption that once came with selling back your music in order to buy appeasement from the music gods, so they would turn you on to Patsy Cline, Kings of Leon, and the Staple Singers? Hitting the "delete" key isn't the same remedy, nor the same satisfaction, as you seek to create your musical identity. The communal experience influences how you spend your time and money on music. Though online libraries make it convenient and more environmentally friendly to participate in music commerce, no number of chat boards or Hot 100 lists will replace the accessible, friendly, soul-saving role of the used music vendor.