Five years of the iPod -- your thoughts

[Rit]

i don't own an iPod. am i gay?

[rockysigman]

Yes, but those two things have nothing to do with one another.

[Rit]

you mean i made a spurious connection between the two?

[rockysigman]

Something like that.

[Rit]

silly me.

[phil]

Can I get a rewind?


Compilation tapes used to be made with love. Now, in the age of ripping and burning, they're as romantic as a microwave lasagne

Laura Barton
Friday December 8, 2006
The Guardian

There is a woman in Alaska named Marie. She is 88 years old with blue-grey hair set gently back from her forehead, the last surviving speaker of the Eyak language. Years ago I saw an interview with her. "When I'm home I talk to the TV," she said. "I talk, but it don't answer me back." And I recall being struck, particularly, by the downward set of her mouth; a slow, soft drift towards her chin. It made you think of all the beautiful things she wanted to say in her language but couldn't. I think of Marie occasionally, whenever I am gripped by an autumnal pang of loss for the compilation tapes of my youth. They, too, seem to be a language that will soon be obsolete.

Once the CD rolled into town, no one wanted to know about cassettes - they were slightly awkward, like a pair of Clark's shoes. But I retain an affection for the C90; it has always seemed to me like a hulking great freighter transporting a delicate cargo. You felt your message was safe on board a cassette. Because that, really, was the point of a compilation: there was a message.

There are compilations that are introductions, made up of the very rafters of your musical taste; had we just met, I would invariably present you with Heroin by the Velvet Undergound, Them's Gloria, Pixies' Hey and Frankie and the Classicals' What Shall I Do? Then there are those that are crafted for your musical co-conspirators, when the compilation itself becomes part of your conversation - a Masonic handshake, if you will. A friend and I have a CD compilation conversation that has been going on for three years. But he said to me recently that even a decade ago he could not have made me such compilations because his wife would have divorced him, and quite rightly so - for back then they would have been cassettes, and they're different things altogether.

The death of the cassette means a compilation doesn't mean what it once did. It has lost its impact, just like that other c-word. In an age of ripping and burning and downloading and printing off the tracklisting in a sprightly Word document, compilations can be made in minutes. They are as romantic as a microwave lasagne. But once upon a time, making a compilation tape was akin to writing a poem.

On my first date with my first boyfriend, we went, inexplicably, to see The Bridges of Madison County. Afterwards, standing in the foyer of Wigan multiplex, he handed me a compilation tape with a cover he had drawn himself and, inside, a tracklisting that covered everything from Pink Carnations by Animals That Swim to the Beach Boys' God Only Knows.

And my heart skipped a beat. I understood, you see, that compilation tapes weren't just made, they were erected like some musical Stonehenge: songs hauled from far afield, from your friends, from your parents, taped off John Peel or the top 40 countdown, with the constant battle to keep Bruno Brookes' voice from lolloping in at the end. They were architecture: drafted, drawn up on blueprints and then built. At night you would lie awake puzzling over its structure: What song should you put on first? What should come last? The first of course has to be arresting. The last has to be the one you want to linger in their thoughts. There should be absolutely no songs about sex.

They took all Sunday afternoon, crouched beside your tape player with pins and needles in your feet, your finger hovering above the pause button and your mum hollering up the stairs that your tea's growing cold. But you're busy thinking about the way Sixteen Candles drifts into Famous Blue Raincoat, and tentatively placing the sticker on the tape, fearful that your hands will wobble and then they won't fall in love with you because you were the type of person who puts stickers on wonkily. I wonder where all that love goes now that it's all dragging and clicking and burning. I wonder how many beautiful things go unsaid. And I talk to the computer, but it don't answer me back.

[rockysigman]

In the last couple of days, the left channel on my iPod has developed a pretty distinct buzzing on the bassier side of things. Anyone else have this problem? Easy fix?

[Kensterberg]

I've never had that sort of issue, Rocky. But my first thought is that it may well be your headphones rather than the iPod. Have you tried it with a different set of phones? Or hooking it up to your stereo?