You're Taking Me Back Such a Long Long Long Time Ago

Steven Rubio discusses the inevitable failure to recreate the sound of the past, even when you have all the tunes:

One example of my obsession with the music of 60s FM "underground" radio is that I have constructed an ever-growing Musicmatch playlist featuring the songs of that time. It's currently up to more than 87 hours of music. I put it on shuffle play and enjoy.

But I'm stymied by my attempt to recreate the past. Part of it is the missing DJs ... I don't mind the absence of ads, but it would be nice to have the voices of those days as part of the show. But even weirder is that the music sounds too good. I spent most of the 60s listening to the radio on little mono tabletop models barely bigger than a book, not to mention the station didn't always come in very good. When I listen now, with my subwoofer booming, it's not the same. Same songs, but not the same sound. And it never will be, of course.
I know exactly what he's talking about here. The biggest influence on my early development as a rock and roll appreciator and wannabee participant was the experience, in the late '70s, of huddling around my little portable radio, riding the tuning knob in an attempt to pick the occasional punk rock song on this or that unidentifiable, distant, barely tuneable college station.

Listening to these very songs on my iPod or on my stereo isn't nearly the same. Like Rubio's 60s FM songs, they sound too "good." No static, no white noise, no drop-outs. (Well, OK, if I try to listen to them on my stereo from iTunes using Airport Express, there are drop-outs. They're not the same kind of drop-outs, though.)

Also, I already know what they are. The sense of discovery, of falling into something you've never heard before, is missing. I remember hearing a song called "Mental Masturbation" on KALX, Berkeley, around 1978. If there was a back-announce, I missed it. The identity of the band that did this song was a deeply fulfilling unsolved mystery till, ten years later as a DJ myself, I interviewed a member of the band whose demo it had been from. (It was the Nuns. And I might have known. But I didn't.)

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