The Poor Unfashionable CD

I am a member of a dying breed. A person who goes to the music store and purchases a CD. I was still in the process of putting out my CD a few months ago when a friend asked whether or not the record would be available for download on iTunes. I told her yes it would be, but why not just buy the CD. I wanted her to see all the artwork we had so carefully prepared. She responded that CD's take up too much room, that she has since mp3'd (a new word) all of her CDs and subsequently thrown them all out. She was so matter of fact about it, she had no idea she was breaking my heart.

To a musician that has just given birth essentially, to a new CD, the idea that someone would take the artwork and possibly the CD and throw it in the dustbin after digitizing it is, well, hard to fathom. Then again, I know the music industry is changing and the business model, the idea of the music's worth has changed.

Maybe my view is skewed being a musician, but the work involved with creating the record, the recording, the artwork, not to mention the sheer expense to make a CD, is immense. When I first started listening to music, my parents had dusty old vinyl LPs that were magical in their delicacy; they had organic artwork and gate-folded covers. I was told earnestly by my father to hold just the edges, touching the grooves would somehow diminish their worth. The artists were somehow larger than life on those covers. My siblings and I listened carefully and repeatedly to those precious stacks in our youth, unwittingly gaining yardsticks for every other record we would ever hear.

Even now, mention a Rickie Lee Jones song and I can tell you what album it came from and what the cover looked like. Its hard to believe the current generation of new Beatle fans will listen to the album Abbey Road and not take note of the fact that Paul McCartney is out of step with the rest of his compadres as they cross the road on the famous cover. For me, that is part of the mystique of that album.

I'm yearning for a return to this kind of thinking. When will the unfashionable CD be fashionable again?