Wednesday, May 5, 2010

CD's Are Wrecking Our Kids.

My teenagers are slobs. I suspect your teenagers are slobs too. I blame CD's for this.

Back when I was a kid, we listened to music (and George Carlin) on RECORDS. Record ownership required respect and rules. You took care of the record jacket by keeping them organized in milk crates. If you were very particular, you had individual plastic sleeves to protect the record jacket.

To listen to the record, you pulled the inner sleeve out (careful to not drop any inserts if it was a Pink Floyd album). You held the record gingerly only on it's edge and placed it carefully on the turntable. Prior to playing, you cleaned the record. Then, with the precision of a surgeon, you set the needle on the spinning vinyl.

That kind of diligence carries on in life to your first car, first house, first pacemaker etc.

Over the course of a dating realtionship, couples lend each other sentimantal records. Breaking up always involved retrieving one's albums. This was such an odious process that it was better to stay together that have to divide the collection.

Then along came CD's and they were marketed as virtually indestructible. No care was required to listen to them. Disks could lie around on your bedroom floor, covered in mayonnaise and cat hair, and still play in your DiscMan.

Why should a kid learn about the value of taking care of something when that thing was a Frisbee one minute and playing Foo Fighters the next?

Now music is nothing more than MP3 files on iPods. Not only do kids never touch the songs, most of the time they don't even pay for them. Thanks for contributing to the diminished respect for the law Napster and Limewire.

Today when a couple breaks up, they don't need to return anyone's records. They just delete the songs. And the memories.

11 comments:

Abigail Wise said...

Haha. Very true. Unfortunately, I'm one of these kids- I hardly remember a time before CDs and I have to say that if it was possible to surgically attach my iPod to my body, I would. I will agree with you on the terror of stealing music and the ease behind it. A lot of my friends are musicians and I wouldn't want to take away a cent from people who work so hard.

Shelle-BlokThoughts said...

LOL... hey, is it bad if I too didn't take care of my CD's and never touch my music and delete my memories???

Just sayin.

I like to keep up with the times.

Surfer Jay said...

Welcome to the 21st Century, gramps.

Not a soccer mom said...

I still remember the cringe when dancing around to your favorite song and hearing the scratch of the needle running across my favorite record.
This post is so true. I love the old record sounds so much better... and I don't know where you guys get your 'nondestructable' CD's mine skip and bump all the time.
I have yet to buy an Ipod... I am so behind the game.
Love nostalgic posts

MindyMom said...

So true!

And yes, my teens ARE slobs.

Joanna Cake said...

Yup, my teens leave cds and dvds out of their cases and spread all over the floor. No respect and they get the hump when the things dont work properly afterwards or they cant find the one they want :(

I think that last comment is so sad - the end of the relationship being signified by the deleting of the tunes.

dadshouse said...

Ha. Funny perspective. And I sort of agree with it.

TK Kerouac said...

This looks like a cool blog here!

Mala said...

I grew up in the era of cassettes, which taught us patience... rewind, rewind, rewind. stop. play. nope. stop. rewind. rewind. rewind. stop. play. damn! too far! Stop. fast forward. fast forward. fast forward. stop.

it also taught us how to cuss under our breath.

Just me... said...

The whole of society has adapted a disposable mentality... Find a TV repairman.. :):):)

Kevin McKeever said...

Oddly, I never scratched a CD. Until I got married.

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