As I sit here and think about the technology of distributing music, I can’t help but to hark back to my younger days. I loved music as much then as I do now, but the medium was a little different. I remember getting my first LP. For those of you who are too young to remember LPs, I’m speaking of vinyl records…twelve inch circular discs of varying dark-colored rings, plus a label and a little, tiny hole in the middle so it would fit snugly on your record player. I think the technical term was phonograph, but I could never quite figure out how this piece of equipment ever got a goofy name like that. No matter what it was called, it was magic to me. I would drop the needle into the groove and a couple of crackles and pops later, my favorite tune was cranking out of bad speakers. Awesome! How could this get any better? Even having to tape a penny or two to the record player arm never bothered me. Musical bliss!

A few years later, it did get better. I bought my first 8-track tape machine. It was glorious! No more skipping. No more scratches. I never had to clean the tapes and they took up much less room. And the sound was great. There was one major flaw with 8-track tapes though …the dreaded fade-out between programs. Oh yeah, the song would literally fade out, and then a loud click, and the song would fade back in. It was years before I realized there was a Michael Schenker guitar solo in the middle of my favorite UFO song!! Ah, but you can’t put a lid on technology. And soon enough we had the cassette tapes come out. No more fading in and out! And, man, these little buggers were mobile. You could listen to them on the home stereo, take them with you in the car and before you knew it, Sony made it possible to walk around and listen to your favorite tape. Is this world great, or what?

Almost looks like vinyl, huh? Note from the editor: Cassettes are awesome.

I thought we had hit the technological pinnacle of music until the compact disc revolutionized the music industry forever. And, now music is damn-near flawlessly reproduced via MP3s and we can download any song we want off the web.

This sort of brings us back full circle to the satellite floating over us allowing us to enjoy all the music we can stand to listen to.

I do love the satellite stations, but I have a couple of suggestions. What? Did you think I wasn’t going to get at least one jag in here? I’m way too cynical for that. Okay, here goes: when you satellite radio people select a song from a group that has a huge catalog of music, please don’t select a cover song! The other day, I was driving in my car and I see Van Halen is coming on the Boneyard. I limber up my fingers for some fierce air guitar fun when out of my speakers comes ‘Dancing in the Streets’. Are you kidding me? Have you seen the catalog of VH music available? And you go for ‘Dancing in the Streets’?! Another one that chafes my butt is Dire Straits. Do the satellite program managers know that they made a ton of other music besides ‘Sultans of Swing’?

Dire Straits, in concert, playing "Sultans of Swing" over and over again

And finally, one of the main reasons I subscribe to satellite radio is because I don’t want to hear the inane, meaningless ramblings of the brainless disc jockeys I had to endure on terrestrial radio. I have noticed of late, ever since the merger, many of the jocks on the satellite stations have taken to chatting it up between songs. Except for a select few (mentioned earlier), please, do us all a favor and don’t speak, just put on more glorious music.

Here’s Vodes’ second article for meandthestereo!  Here’s the source for the Dire Straits image! Here’s the source for the record player image! Stay tuned for Saturday’s first Artist of the Week post and then prepare for more new articles from some new columnists starting next week! Tell Vodes how much you love hearing “Sultans of Swing” in the comments below!