When I was your age, if you're in your late teens or early 20s, there was nothing remotely like Apple Music or Spotify. If we wanted to listen to a specific album we'd have to buy a copy of the vinyl record at a music store. I used to go to a store called Mushroom Too, on Broadway and Zimpel in New Orleans. It was kind of like a head shop, smelled of incense, and they had a great sound system and they were always playing good music. It was on the second floor above a bar called The Boot that had the usual college stuff, beer, burgers, pinball. The record store had rows of racks of albums, like a library in a way, and you'd wander around looking for bands you knew or had heard about, and you'd stare at album covers, front and back and try to decide. Looking for "something good to listen to." And you could only afford a certain number every year, so you listened to each album a lot. I don't know if it works that way for young folk today. In 50 years when you're looking back will you know the songs in the order they appeared on the album? I never bought singles, by the time I came along album rock was the thing, stations like WNEW and WPLJ in New York. I'd listen to the student station at Tulane, WTUL. They'd play longer songs, and not always the most popular song on an album. You got the sense that the DJ was being creative with the songs they chose. BTW, both Mushroom and The Boot are still there. What a trip. #There was also a local station that was like KFOG in the Bay Area, can't remember its name. And of course like everyone everywhere I listened to Dr Demento. #
Later, when I was a grad student in Madison, I lived in a house with nine roommates. We shared lots of stuff, including our record collections and all of a sudden new music worlds opened to me, including (memorably) Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat, Talking Heads and Saturday Night Fever (which I'm listening to as I write this). #
- Jury duty is an intensive bootcamp for American democracy.#
- The great thing about jury duty is you get a very clear sense of what self-government is about. It makes you feel empowered which can be even more uncomfortable than feeling powerless.#
- So much of the frenetic activity online is about that sense of powerlessness. So we give money to causes or we join in boycotts, but these aren't as powerful as participating in governing. Jury duty is a very quick way to do that.#
- We have to act more like citizens and less like subjects. I think that's the real message of the election of 2016. Subjects elect someone like Trump. People who think like citizens would elect someone very different.#
- I wrote this on Facebook on this day in 2017. #