Music Addiction

Ian E. Muller

I’ve never felt the clouds of heroin. The demons of coke. The angels gently painting the sky fuschia in a LSD-wave. Sure I’ve emptied my fair share of whiskey bottles (and your fair share too), and smoked a few packs. And there was that stint in High School… let’s not talk about that. I’m not a drug addict. I’ve been mistaken for an addict. Many times someone has asked me where  to score a dime bag, or if I could hook them up with some shrooms. Just the type of person I am I guess. I do have addictions though. I have the average “adventurer’s” addictions - give me an adrenaline rush every 30 minutes and I’d be a happy man for the rest of my life. I love a good wine or beer or scotch, I’ve explored the exquisite flavors of shisha (not the correct term, but whatever), and I have wanderlust like a hobbit of a mere 111 years (remember to pronounce that “eleventy-one”). I also have a few more “exotic” addictions - sushi, zombie movies, philosophical debate, and the point of this post - music.

I am an audiophile, and am (happily) addicted to the blessed aural sex (pun intended - if you don’t get it, say that out loud).  I can admit this happily and without shame, because I have received nothing but joy from this addiction (minus the withdrawal). While I can say that I have never felt the effects of heroin, I feel that I have felt something akin to the withdrawal from it. Being without a good tune for a prolonged period of time is painful to me. I get antsy. I get jittery. I get angry. Cut me off from music for more than 24 hours and you’re likely to have a raving lunatic on your hands, ranting about quarter-notes and syncopated machine-gun drumming… There is nothing worse than cutting a fiend off from his poison of choice, and I am thankful that has only happened to me on a few, rare occasions.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t need to be constantly listening to music to be in a good mood. I can go without it for short periods of time. Am I listening to music right this second? You can bet your face I am. But I don’t need to be drinking listening to music in order to have a good time. Jeez… But please don’t ask me to go a day without listening to at least some acoustic rock… you’re asking for trouble. Many issues can be seen with the portable audio culture we live in today. When you’re too busy listening to your iPod to pay attention to the fact that your crossing the street… you deserve to be road kill. Though I do feel sorry about this poor woman, its a shame it happened, and I don’t think it’s her fault for listening to her ipod at the time… who expects a fucking tree to fall on them, really? If I was her, I would just hope I was listening to something damn good at the time… (P.S. - I do hope they identify her and put friends and family’s minds at ease…). But it does get ridiculous when New York has to try and pass a law about wearing headphones while crossing the street… really? I find that a bit unnecessary. If someone is going to be retarded, please by all means let them die and increase the worlds average IQ… please. But I digress…

Where was I? Oh yes, my music addiction. There are certains bands that if I hear they are  releasing a new album,  I simply have to own it as soon as possible. When Tool put out 10,000 Days I was in Ohio at the time (don’t ask why, I try to block these things from memory…) but I made a point to hit a Best Buy and purchase it. When The Mars Volta released Octahedron I went out and bought it as soon as possible after I heard about it (the next day, considering Brandon told me about it after all the stores were closed). This raises an interesting subject though…

Thrice, one of my top 5 bands (ever…) announced back in January 2009 that they were working on a new album. As of June, this new album was titled “Beggars” and in July they announced that it would be released in October (woo birthday time!). However in mid-July the album was leaked online, to the dismay of the band. In order to recover from this leak, they have decided to release the album on iTunes early (August 11th) and release the physical album on September 15th with 5 bonus tracks (most specifically, a cover of one of the few Beatles songs I like - Helter Skelter). While I am sorry that the album was leaked and that the band had to change their marketing plans to accommodate this, did I download the leaked album? Yes - but I plan on buying a copy of it on September 15th anyway. Being one of my favorite bands I couldn’t resist the siren’s call to hear this new album (which I might add is amazing, though I will wait till August 11th to write a full review, if I decide to). Is it wrong that I effectively supported the piracy and leaking of this album? Yeah probably. Do I particularly care? No, especially because I’m going to buy it anyway, so I’m not really hurting the band. I guess it comes down to whether or not I feel comfortable with this morally-grey area. Did I steal? Yes and no (the no is more my opinion but I’ll save that for a later date). Do I feel bad about it? Yes, because I know the band is annoyed about the album being leaked. Am I going to delete the album? Yes… once I have a physical copy so I can rip higher quality versions of the tracks.

It comes down to a matter of opinion. I am of the opinion that if you love a bands music you should support that band. I am also of the opinion that my audio addiction needs to be satiated so that I don’t slaughter the innocent in a psychotic rampage. So how do I solve this dilemma? Not listen to leaked music and wait till the album comes out? Not care and just download music willy-nilly? Meh… I’ll settle for supporting the bands by paying outrageous prices for concert tickets to make up for the fact that I stole their album five days before it was released…

So continue listening to music, and enjoying that lovely aural sex… I’ll catch you after I’ve listened to this Thrice album 534573457322346268 times…

~Ian

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 11:53:19PM EDTand is filed under Audiophilia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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