Flattery

I was recently tagged on Facebook to post images of ten album covers which reflect work that influenced my musical tastes. That’s a fun one – much of what passes back and forth on social media I’d just as soon forego, but music and creativity are for me inexorably and profoundly linked.

Years ago I took a couple years digitizing my old albums, track by track. I did NOT use automated software in which one simply plops the needle onto the vinyl, walks away, and the computer does everything. I used much more sophisticated recording software which enabled me to adjust each conversion to bring it up as closely as possible to CD quality. Going through decades of old albums, I would find tracks worn almost down to nothing; I’d clearly loved those songs and played them to within an inch of their life. And some of them were crap. On the other hand, I would find other tracks that were pristine, which I’d clearly only listed to a couple of times and gone on, and they were gorgeous, wonderful songs.

What the hell was I thinking?!

Well, what it reflects is that over time my musical tastes have evolved and changed, just as my creative approach to art has evolved and changed. After the Facebook tag, most of the albums I posted were decades old. It’s true that much of the music that first influenced me was from my youth. But most of the music in my current playlists are only a few years old. Well … for me “a few years” might be 15 or 20, but still.

The past is prologue. Where have you gone since then? What do you hear and see now?