musical escortary…

This evening after possibly the most boring and tedious day of work I reached into the shelves and pulled  Equinoxe by JMJ as I have come to know him today out to play.

This was several hours after my drive this morning to work  under the influence of 1537, when I played the touted Equinoxe Infinity, I streamed it okay on Spotify, no purchase necessary as I took advantage of the artist by using a streaming service. Streaming service sounds vaguely pornographic or illicit as if I am dabbling in the shady world of musical escortary.

There has always been for me a strange irony about electronic music being on vinyl, surely even in the dim and distant past electronic music deserved to be on some sort of more exciting and exotic format. Of course once CD’s and mp3’s arrived we yearned for the return to the record. There is the elitist feeling that records are the way even though surely digital formatting is perfect for electronic music. It’s so space age and out there man.

I found myself a little bemused by some of the new album, the good was very good and then there was the other stuff that left me cold. I was driving so can’t let you know what those tracks where but they involved strange electronic voices and some rhythmic elements that reminded me of the less fulfilling variety of modern pop music. I am finding this is a similar feeling I often get when visiting new albums by old favorites, Neil Young may get whole chapters in that book.

So back to  arriving home I took the time to listen to Equinoxe. Maybe it was the familiarity that comforted me here. Suddenly I was all warm cozy and swooshy, feeling pretty self-satisfied and content. It’s s chirpy kind of happy album, pretty melodies as well.  Of course it may have just been that this was 12 shiny inches of plastic. Perhaps there is something to be said for electronic music being on vinyl after all.

Suddenly though as I looked at the cover I started thinking about those watchers staring at me from the sleeve. Row upon row of creepy peering glasses searching into my befuddled soul. I was discomfited disillusioned and a little guilty for spending my day listening to music and preparing to navigate the world of creating forms to improve data collection and work flow. How did social work turn into this? Preparing to transfer two programs to a HIPAA compliant medical record while listening to electronic music.

Tomorrow I swear I will get back to my roots and get involved with some truly angry second or third generation gang kids who will somehow remind me of why I do this. Perhaps I’ll shoot hoops or play Sorry anything but look at a database or another form, maybe I’ll get cursed at by a kid or an adult just for kicks and drink coffee in the shift change meeting and make sarcastic remarks and eat red licorice with the staff before they get to work.