Waking Ear

Elliott Smith/"Somebody That I Used to Know" -- Why I need an iPod:

We were driving down to Austin, and Girlfriend plugged in a random CD from the collection I brought with me. Instantly, I was transported back to the summer of 1999, when I interned in Washington and had a mile-and-a-half walk to the train station every morning at 5 a.m. I listened to the following CDs incessantly that summer:

Elliott Smith/XO
Beth Orton/Trailer Park
Blur/13
Wilco and Billy Bragg/Mermaid Avenue
Afghan Whigs/1969
Kelly Willis/What I Deserve

I have a bad habit of listening to CDs until I get the gist of them, then setting them down. There are so many new things to put into the rotation, and unless an album blows me away to the point where I must listen to it continuously, I won't do it. But I know I've let some good stuff fall through the cracks.

Which is why I need an iPod. Because then the stuff is stored there. It's at my immediate disposal, forever. There's no scouring through my daunting collection of music to find something I haven't listened to in a while. I hit random, and if I go, "Holy shit, I haven't heard that in forever," then I just pull the whole album up.

This is beautiful. The way we listen to music is changing before our eyes. We download things. Some of us pay for it, some don't. But it's instant, and then it's there, and we can listen in a million different ways. Soon you won't even need an iPod because you'll have a hard drive in your car that wirelessly syncs with your home PC when you pull into the driveway.

"So why don't you buy an iPod and shut up about it?" you ask, cleverly. Well, gotta get rid of this credit card debt, much of which was amassed right after that summer internship, interestingly enough. But the goal is to get that cleared by next February, or sooner. And then, my friends, the iPod will be mine. And you'll never hear the end of it.

I wanna get that Phoenix Suns jersey on my Amazon wishlist, too. Consume, consume!