Lagniappe Mobile Blog

A few weeks ago, my wife and I journeyed to her hometown of Ozark, Alabama (fondly referred to as Oz) for the celebration of one of her closest friend’s birthdays. It is through Justin and Maghen (Ivy’s friend and her husband) that we met an individual by the name of Steve Etheridge. One thing that I admire about this gentleman is his social commentaries. His most recent battle has been with the phone company over their unwillingness not to accept a perfectly good check to pay his monthly bill. The conversation ended with AT&T ended with him declaring, “If 20 years go by and you still won’t take a check from me, then I’ll owe you money 20 years from now.” Believe me, he wasn’t lying, and he will stick by that promise.

On this visit to this agrarian utopia, we were listening to some seasoned Merle Haggard on a CD. Lo and behold, the music began to skip and spasm to the point that the disc had to be changed. Steve began to go off on how he’s ready for CD’s to play out.

“These goddamn CD’s ain’t ever been worth a shit,” his freshly opened beer funneled down his throat. “You can buy a CD and put it in a velvet case and never touch the damn thing for years and take it out and put it in a CD player, and the damn thing’ll skip!” He went on to explain that anytime he turns up his stereo the slightest bit, whatever CD he’s playing starts jumping. Great lengths were taken for this to be prevented by Steve cushioning his receiver with pillows and cushions, but the problem continued much to his anger.

Compacts discs have been something I’ve preached against since the beginning. The prices were (and still are) outrageous and the whole promise of “the clearest recording in the world” thing didn’t really turn my head. I only stopped buying cassettes when I had to, and after I felt like one of those “8-Tracks were awesome” guys, which I’ll probably look like after you get to the end. Before I purchased my first CD (White Zombie “La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1″), I had already experienced the skip phenomenon as well as witnessed many CD’s that had met their demised after being dropped one time. I liked cassettes. Sure they wore out after five or six years if you listened to the entire thing four or five times a day, but you could drop them, crack them, throw them, whatever and still have the music intact. You could even take the damn things apart and fix them when you had to. When I bought the Vomit Spots’ “Tone Def” at the Sound Shop in Bel-Air Mall, the tape had been spindled backwards. Know what I did? I took it apart and rewound it. Viola!

The more I look at the history of CD’s, the more I think it was a huge money making scam. We started out with records. They skipped if they got scratched, and got scratchy when they wore out. Then, 8-Tracks entered the picture for a little while. They were world’s better than records, but it never really caught on kind of like the whole recordable Mini-Disc thing in the late 90s. Cassettes rule the 80s and part of the 90s until people went crazy for CD’s, which was nothing but a throwback to records except worse.

At least with a record, one could jump over the scratches, and I even remember having records a a kid that were cracked that could still be enjoyed. Why didn’t the industry make it so you never have to physically touch the actual CD whatsoever? “Impossible,” you say? I remember the video laser discs that came out in between Beta and VHS. These were album-size laser disc in a PROTECTIVE plastic sleeve. You slipped the the plastic sleeve in, the disc came out and played, and then you got it out by slipping the plastic sleeve back in the player. CD’s could have been done the same way and still maintain their compact nature, but that would have been too nice and innovative. You scratch or crack a CD, then it’s over. So, what do you have to do if you want another one? Well, you shill out the money and buy another one, which leads me to my next point.

The price of CD’s were bloody outrageous with new released going for $15-$20. Those prices haven’t changed much over the years, and it was even more disheartening when it came out that it was only costing $1 to produce one. ONE DOLLAR! I’m sure that price has gone down to pennies. Sometimes, you can go to Dollar General and pick up a spindle of twenty blank CD’s for less than $10. I thought it was quite amusing when the industry responded with, “Well, since you found out we’ve been ripping you off, we’ll drop the price a couple of bucks.” So, you know the industry has the hook-up industrially speaking. You do the math. Why has the music industry thrived so over the past decade? Maybe because you have to buy three or four copies of the same CD over the years because they would ruin a the drop of a hat (or CD).

That’s why I think sometimes that the piracy issue gets the industry’s goat so much. I don’t think that really all concerned about the legality of it. That’s a “Pot Calling the Kettle Black” situation. I think it’s for the sole fact that the consumers that they have been duping for years now is finally getting back at them. All that bad karma over the years is finally coming back on them, and con men get pretty pissed when the joke’s on them.

I’m still waiting to shape my final opinion on the whole digital music experience with all its iPods and Zunes. I like the aspect that you can transmit the music over a car stereo. However, with the experience that I’ve had with computers, I could just see some bug or glitch wiping out an entire library of music, but just like CD’s, I guess I’ll have to give into the trend sometime in the near future.