Confluence of activities: unpacking boxes; artwork for The Float; gathering photos, sounds and videos for the Kickstarter campaign. It’s a strange combo of surfing memory lane and slamming into the current moment as wall of water, asking how does this past relate to what needs to happen now? Albums become markers for time, both in the making and in listening. This Heat’s first album is forever linked to a certain room, a group of people, as is Rush’s “Hemispheres” (boyfriend) and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” (solo). Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” conjures up a moment standing in the Tower Records store on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, talking with a friend about…hearing records for the first time. Why albums? Why not singles?
When I first met my friend Ben Walker (who does the amazing Too Much Information podcast on WFMU) it was 2004 and we were talking about Ipods, which were just entering the marketplace.
I said, “It’s the same as an old Victrola. You listen to one song at a time. Or maybe it’s like the way 45s are stacked on a turntable and drop down to play…”
He stared at me and asked “Why didn’t you say that when I was recording?”.
All formats at all times. It’s about listening, what a musician wants to make and what suits a user best. I grew up listening to singles. I listened to “Young Blood” by The Coasters over and over. “Honky Tonk” by Bill Doggett (Pt. 1…never getting around to flipping it for Pt. 2) was another favourite. But I make albums, I love the length, the format, the arc. I also make sounds and music and songs that aren’t albums, which I adore, but it’s only the albums that each have their own notebook, their related photos, movies and tours, working titles and cassettes. I have so many cassettes. They’ve been shipped across the US twice, waiting for this moment, of 2012 digitization opportunities, for culling, posting, selling and tossing.