Hollow plastic dominoes

In the far-distant olden days (pre-1982), buying music was an altogether more rewarding experience: there was no Amazon, no iTunes, no, you had to get off your backside and shuffle down to the shops where you would find row upon row of cardboard-sleeved (or if you were lucky, a picture-disc) vinyl goodness. There was the gentle thwup as you slowly flipped your way through the latest and greatest, stopping occasionally to pull out the album to admire the artwork, the gate-fold and the generally readable text listing lyrics or artist information on the inner sleeve. With a record album, you had something to prop up and admire whilst it played.

Aside from the rapidly dwindling specialist dealers, this nostalgic vision has all but faded away; replaced of course by the clinically perfect Compact Disc. Browsing is now a machine-gun like cacophony of hollow plastic dominoes cracking against one another as people feverishly thumb through them at the sale racks, barely seeing the artist, let alone the artwork. It hardly seems worth bothering anyway, as closer examination only presents you with a track list which would be no more legible had it been written on a grain of rice and placed in a novelty pendant. There is no feeling of substance.

Now you might be thinking that I’m one of these stuck-in-the-dark-ages advocates of vinyl, not so: my LP collection has been stashed away in the loft for several years now; I don’t even own a turntable. My music is purely digital with much of it residing on the computer and the iPod. There's no need to scan up and down the miniscule spines of the cases, my head pitched awkwardly at 45˚, looking for Now That’s What Someone Might Have Called Music 20 Years Ago, Volume 45. No, I can flick through my entire collection, sort it by almost any means, search it and get it to pick me a random selection with the mere click of my mouse. There’s no need for the 5x5 insert, however comprehensive. Track lists, lyrics and even what the producer had for breakfast the day he put it all together can all be gleaned from the ‘net. Well, perhaps not all.

So, as I sat transferring the discs of my music collection from their jewel cases to a DJ case, becoming tidy, vaulted master copies, I found myself wondering if the age of the packaged insert has started its slow decent to oblivion. The artwork has simply become a quick way of knowing which of the five-thousand plus songs is currently pounding in my ears, should I not instantly recognise it; as is so often the case.