Finally embraced online music...

...by which I mean building my music collection in MP3 format without accreting any corresponding CDs. It has been a long time since I've been a collector of music. After moving house nearly a year ago, I put all of my CDs (except box sets and other curios) into CD "wallets" (each one holding 120 discs and their covers) and dispensed with the jewel cases. It felt so much better for the several hundred CDs to fit neatly on one shelf, arranged neatly in genre and alphabetical order. The downside was that, having spent so much time perfecting this arrangement, I pretty much stopped buying CDs. What's more, I pretty much stopped listening to them.

I knew I needed to embrace the more convenient world of a computerised music library, but still felt an attachment to the cumbersome CDs. I liked poring over the album notes and looking at the photos. Data on a hard drive felt such a sterile alternative to a tangible collection.

I use the past tense above ("liked" and "felt") because such sentiments have very quickly been buried. Those CD wallets now look and act like photo albums; the focus of my music collection is on the computer; and I am (very) actively collecting again.

It started on my birthday a few months ago. My BH (better half) and I were in town, I wanted to buy a CD (Schubert Piano Trios, if you must know) and she was offering to pay. The store (Sydney's only dedicated classical music store that I'm aware of) didn't have the CD I was after, and have not received it in the intervening months despite putting in an order that day. My patience quickly gave way and my friend Harry offered to grab some of that music through his emusic account. I put two and two together and decided it was time I gave the world of online music a go. It's been great.

Two factors have made it great: emusic and MediaMonkey. The first is an online service for acquiring music; the second is software for playing it on your computer and managing your library. Both are alternatives to the irritating iTunes, which plays both roles. Emusic is a subscription service: I pay about A$15 a month for the right to download 50 tracks. It doesn't roll over; it's "use it or lose it". It has an enormous catalogue but it's exlusively smaller-label stuff. So there's no Britney Spears, but there's no Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan either. There are already 29 albums on my "Saved for later" list, so the catalogue is not a problem. The tracks are DRM-free and are high-quality rips. At $4.00 for an album (of 10 songs), I have broken free of the sentimental attachment to physical goods, and I am willing to risk my 4 bucks on unfamiliar material. I've burned through my 50 tracks this month and have to wait a week for the quota to reset, but I've downloaded two great albums, by Gillian Welch (Time) and Ornette Coleman (Sound Grammar). Both were artists I'd been wanting to listen to for a while but never got around to buying on CD.

For comparison's sake, an album on iTunes costs upwards of $15.

MediaMonkey is the other key to the puzzle. I've never felt really comfortable with other music-playing-and-management software in the past. This one pushes all the right buttons. It's designed with large collections in mind, and facilitates navigation and segmentation (e.g. Classical, Jazz, Rock...) It provides a lot more convenience and control when it comes to ripping music than I've experienced before. And it is scriptable; many users have created excellent extensions to the software. Some of these provide features just as valuable as anything the software itself does (e.g. regular expression search and replace of track data). Altogether, this is software that makes me feel confident that I can manage my large and growing collection into the future.

It's been a quick turnaround. After dabbling years ago, and thinking about making the switch on and off ever since, I was hooked immediately. It's like my mother said when she finally got a digital camera after years of deliberation: "I wish I'd done this ages ago."

Dylan fires in Sydney, at last

On Wednesday night I saw Bob Dylan play at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, and it was easily the best concert of the three times I've seen him. The sound was great, the whole band was on song and Bob was spirited. It's about bloody time! The first time I saw him (around 2000), my seat was in a different postcode from the Centennial Park stage, but it seemed like a good gig. The second time the sound was muffled and the musicians lacked spark. For the greatest songwriter and one of the greatest performers of the 20th century, things seemed destined not to work out in Sydney. Finally, this week, it happened.

A refreshing change is that Dylan now fully embraces his recent material. I can't stand "greatest hits" sets where song after song is played far removed from its original context. Sure, he does a great job of reinterpreting his old songs - nothing's sacred - but he's released three excellent albums since 1997 and it's about time his concerts properly acknowledged this. His bravery is wonderful: apart from 4 or 5 songs that you can expect to hear at any show, and a few others in high rotation, the set list changes dramatically from night to night. On stage, each song begins with the stage lights off and the musos mucking around to find their groove. This is no choreographed performance like The Rolling Stones or what have you; as far as musicianship goes, it's the real deal. That's why his concerts can be hit and miss, but it's worth it.

My one complaint, and one which at times threatens to ruin the concert experience, is that he doesn't sing properly. To many, that would be an obvious complaint about Bob Dylan, but I'm not talking about his croaky voice, I'm talking about his phrasing. He deliberately rushes his vocal delivery as if he needs to get one line out of the way and take some deep breaths before starting the next one. (There may be some truth to that; he's too frail to play guitar now!) This is a fundamental flaw: the emotional impact of music is very much dependent on the proper timing of its delivery. I believe he does this because he's bored of playing some of the songs and has to do them "differently" to prevent himself from going insane. I don't blame him, but it's no excuse. His concerts would be far better if he played only the songs he wanted to play, and did them properly. The two best songs of the concert for me were Workingman's Blues and Nettie Moore. Both of these are very recent and neither are anything like my favourite Dylan songs, but their performances here were fantastic. They're quieter, slower songs, requiring delicacy from the musicians. Above all, Dylan sang them properly. A newspaper review said the older material outclassed the new material in concert; I couldn't relate to this sentiment at all.

I suspect this will be the last time I see Bob Dylan in concert. I'm glad my persistence paid off.

My favourite Dylan albums in chronological order:

• The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1962). His second album, but the first was mostly renditions of traditional songs. Freewheelin' is the Dylan's breakout album, and is a priceless masterpiece. Entirely acoustic and mostly unaccompanied, it has poignant songs and humourous ones in roughly equal balance.
  
• Bringing It All Back Home (1965). His first (partly) electric album after four acoustic ones. Incredibly mature songwriting, awesome musicianship with little rehearsal and enough killer songs to send his career into orbit.
  
• John Wesley Harding (1967). After three years of crazy stardom and constant touring, Dylan was burned out. A motorcycle crash put him out of action for a little while, but many suspect he milked this as an excuse to withdraw from the limelight. John Wesley Harding is unlike anything before or since, a laid-back collection of tales with cryptic morals not unlike biblical parables. Its apparent simplicity has caused it to be overlooked somewhat, but it simply cannot be beaten.
  
• Blood On The Tracks (1975). A messy divorce album to match his messy divorce. Whereas previously his songs were rather cryptic and seemed not to involve Dylan personally, there could be no doubt as to the autobiographical nature of this album. It can be a difficult listen because of this.
  
• Good As I Been To You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993). After releasing enough shit in the late 70s and 80s to block the largest toilet, Dylan finally realised he was out of ideas and turned to his folk roots. He didn't write a single song on these two albums, but his interpretation of these traditional folk and blues songs is simply fantastic, as is the guitar playing. Dylan's stunning creative revival of the last ten years is probably due to these albums.
  
• Love and Theft (2001). Wow. With its range of musical styles, this album feels like a history lesson in American music, and it's the most fun that Dylan has committed to record. You simply couldn't ask for a greater return to form than this.
  
• Modern Times (2006). Another excellent effort. Not quite as good as Love and Theft, but once again heaps of fun in some high-energy folk/blues romps. This album draws heavily on some traditional songs, but the performances are thrilling.
  

Notably missing are Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde On Blonde (1966). Although these represented the apex of Dylan's activity in the 1960s, and are frequently considered among his best by the media, I find them to be dated. Excellent, yes, but very much of their time, whereas the albums listed above have a timeless feel about them. Also Time Out Of Mind (1997), Dylan's "comeback" album, has some brilliant songs, some moderate ones and one stinker, but its overdone production makes it less enjoyable than the two albums that followed. Dylan agrees with this, saying that any "trilogy" of recent great albums would have to start with Love and Theft.

Related:

• A Sony Music Video site has a cool collection of Bob Dylan videos. Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965) was the first ever music video, as well as being Bob Dylan's first electric song and an absolute classic. Check out When The Deal Goes Down (2006) for 5 minutes of Scarlett Johansson goodness! Finally, Thunder On The Mountain (2006) is an absolute ball-tearer of a song and a very clever video using entirely archival footage.
• I read this week that there are 19,500 covers of Bob Dylan songs in existence. It blows one's mind. In the 1960s, on a number of occasions cover versions hit the shelves before Dylan's own version. Columbia Records began a slogan "No one sings Dylan like Dylan", which I agree with 1000%. (Yes, that's a thousand.) Sure, others may have technically (far) better voices, but his voice suits his songs perfectly, as do his spontaneous performances. His best recordings are barely rehearsed, which you can't say for a typical cover version!
• It's funny: every time Dylan tours, a flurry of articles about him appears in the press. Since he's always touring somewhere, I imagine that on any given day, somewhere in the world there's a flurry of articles about him. The Age has a good one here.