* * * * * * * kdm

. . . .[ ... ] But today? CD reissues with the original cover pic on front look still a bit poorly to our eyes. It's the small size, the cold plastic feeling, and it's the easily (and cheap) availability of music in digital form. In the meantime, record labels try to avoid some of this, they put CDs now in cardboard covers that look like the old fold-out LPs (nice, but still too small). Or they add to the bare silvery glittering disc plenty of things to make it look more precious; things that cannot be so easily downloaded such as the pure music.
. . . .Probably just the older generation (like us) notice all this because we grew up in the vinyl era. Our first and important musical encounter with music was from the radio - an external source. Something of our own and to our own identification were Singles and Longplay records of black vinyl which were really ours, which lay next to our record player. They were daily normality for us, they were satisfying and comforting us during our teen age.
. . . .Today's teenagers love to listen to not only completely other music, but they also use a different medium. They don't even 'collect' discs.
. . . .The new medium is hasty, ephemeral, volatile, the music does not really belong to us, we cannot write our name on it, we cannot put it in shelves, or in wrapping-paper to give as a present to a friend.
. . . .This new generation has other funs, toys, goals, wishes, and other music, other media. As we had, when we were 14 or 17 years old. A couple of decades later the (then) new generation will experience the same change with their next generation. And that is good so. Nature can only survive if it permanently changes and tries out all directions, to avoid harmful inbreeding leading to extinction. Und das will doch niemand, oder?
. . . .But, thanks to collectors, the old playthings or inventions or pieces of art are still there and can be seen and studied, be it paintings of Vermeer, or Oskar Barnack's first Leica camera, or Heinrich Göbel's first light bulb, or Siemens' first electric generator, or Emil Berliner's first record player. And you still can listen to recordings that a certain Louis Armstrong made in 1927, or Enrico Caruso made in 1904, or a Mister Schulze played 50 years ago into his tape recorder. These are just examples, of course. The available library is huge.