Let me quickly talk you through the gadgetry on my table. There’s a laptop on which I can play CDs and DVDs, an app that allows me to receive all sorts of radio stations you’ve probably never heard of and download and steal music from the Internet. Then I have a Bose SoundDock. [break]
Should none of the FM transmitters be playing, it’s what I want to hear at a particular moment from. And there’s a television which can play music with pictures, or for that matter, any combination of musical notations not covered by all of the above.
In my living room I have much the same sort of arrangement, plus there’s a CD player which can play my entire favorite CDs. In the car, I have a CD player, an iPod compatible Griffin converter, a radio, and for those moments when I’m between my front door and the door of the car, I have an iPod. So really, it’s impossible to imagine any situation anywhere in the world where I cannot avail myself of Coldplay. I once even had “Tiny Dancer” as a ringtone on my phone, except when someone sent me a text, then it was “I’m Yours,” and “Someone like You” when the alarm went off every morning at 5 a.m.
This is not unusual. Right about now, I think that all but the very poor have similarly limitless access to music these days. So why, you may be wondering, it’s so essential that we must all have an iPod now?
When an iPod first emerged into my world about seven years ago, I was pretty dismissive of the whole concept. “It’s utterly unnecessary and a waste of money,” I would tell people who even remotely thought of making the purchase at the outlet above Java at Thamel.
Especially since most of us already owned all the songs we liked on neatly stacked CD cases inside our cars. And I didn’t have time to read yet another instruction book that came with two free stickers. So when I was told that an iPod can store as many songs as I could count in my head, I mocked the idea. Why on earth would I need a device which has the capacity to store a thousand songs when I only like two out of the four Coldplay albums?
So now that iPods have come into my world, and have me dependent like an ummnn –to be honest, it’s past midnight as I write this and I don’t have the time to think of a metaphor because I want to get this column finished, then I can get back to my downloading at Frostwire.com. And even though it’s free, it’s also a time-consuming business because there’s a mammoth choice of songs available on the site.
Have you ever heard of a band called the Doobie Brothers? No? What about Tokyo Fastcars? Apparently, you have to filter through an electronic junkyard of recordings of senseless teenagers banging bits of guitar pieces against their garage walls because their parents probably didn’t let them play inside the house.
But they’re there: The Beatles; Elvis Presley’s “Live in Hawaii.” And even “A Harley Someday” from the very dead David Allan Coe. Wait.
I’m not sure he’s dead as yet. In fact, there are so many freebies that I’m running amok, which, when you consider that all songs are being shared absolutely free, is a frighteningly inexpensive and an addictive way of passing the time. And, to make matters worse, I keep finding the songs I want, and then discovering that I’ve ended up with the original versions, which is awesome.
I’m now actually thinking of completely redesigning the interior of my wife’s Santro to make room for the iPod on the dashboard. You see, it’s no good just having a radio, because radio stations have a nasty habit of playing songs I don’t like, and a CD player is similarly outdated because, with the exception of Pulse, all albums feature at least one track which is fairly poor. That’s what the iPod eradicates – even the slightest possibility that you might encounter in a moment of unpleasantness when an RJ with an annoying fake American accent attempts to “introduce” The Beatles to you. Now, because I put songs in it, I’m in charge and not that annoying RJ. And no one needs know what those songs are.
It’s an inevitable finale therefore that the world of gadgets has made it so ridiculous that Internet has officially taken over our lives. But then, you don’t need me to tell you this. These days, men are men, women are men, and children with gadgets are FBI agents. This has in turn increased the cost of living for the parents.
But then, aren’t we really ourselves to blame? This is the other thing: we make the cost of raising kids higher than it has to be just because we feel they need all these stuffs, like gadgets, certain schools, expensive medications and activities that are nice but aren’t really necessary.
That’s not the worst part, though. The worst part is that when we all have iPods, the Right Honorable Speaker of the House will hopefully finally cease to have a point. He will, I’m afraid, become a casualty of progress.
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