Metro Transit really should start enforcing some of the rules that they have printed in their riders guide. I find that lately the volume of other people playing their walkman’s is becoming intolerable and the drivers are either oblivious to it or are afraid to say anything or just don’t care. Please start enforcing the rules as it is becoming quite unpleasant.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2008.
Walkmans? Which decade are you stuck in, anyway?
Yeah, I thought I was the only one still carrying a walkman on the bus. Must have re-started a trend.
Next will be a resurgence of those big-assed boom boxes….the breakdancers are already coming back….yeah, it’s like that.
This is hilarious, I was just yearning for the old days of walkmans and mixed tapes. My mp3 player is being a little bitch, I spent the whole weekend fighting with it.
I knew this would happen…MP3 players or whatever the fuck the current tech. is…..too loud…..have some respect for those around you, you selfish/self-absorbed bastards….
I haven’t given up my walkman because I love my mix tapes too much. I’ve made a few in the past year. It’s so not the same if it’s an electronic playlist.And hell yeah to the ghetto blasters!
My solution: Start rocking out to other peoples music..even if you dont like it. Usually when the home boys pull up next to me in their walmart pimped civic or the rich ones who think they are cool because their dad bought them a beamer… if they got the subs pounding, I will most likely start rocking out to their pimp music… most of the time it embarrasses them enough to turn it down…. then they can hear my tinny sounding madonna from my *gasp* stock stereo system…I am pretty certain you could applyt he same concept to the ipods on the bus… jsut start getting into the beat of their music and they will realize…wait a minute.. if they are rocking out to my music.. maybe it is a BIT loud….
LOL@ Miles. I’m all for the ghetto blasters! I think i’ll pimp mine right on my shoulder and wear a cropped mesh shirt. It’s the only way to rock that look.
I still have a Walkman, and a newly-acquired Ipod nano. My general rule is, if I can still hear the bus engine and the stop bell, then, it’s not too loud.
Can you still BUY walkmans, or even discmans?? I seriously want to revert.
Going retro on the tunes?I’ve got a box of these big ol’ black CD’s you might want…Osmond bros… Jackson-5.. You name it !!!
Vicky makes a good point. I find I really do have to crank it on my ipod when I’m on the bus to drown out bus noise. I bet a lot of people just don’t realize others can hear their tunes! It IS really annoying though. I always try and keep mine at a level that’s comfortable for me and other people on the bus. I love my ipod, but I still buy CD’s when I really like the artist, you just can’t beat the liner notes and artwork in my opinion.And Floyd, I’ll take that collection! Hooray for record players, I’m planning on getting one soon since the discovery of my mother’s stellar vinyl collection!
What is an MP3? Hmmm Ask Annie and she’ll tell you it’s the music without the CD, artwork and liner notes *boohoo*. This is the problem with our youth! Hey Annie, when you listen to an MP3 your brain is filling in what your ripping software removes/fails to rip. You’re not actually hearing it the way it was created, the way the artist/producer wanted you to hear it. If anything, it’s a very good facsimile but check this analogy:Picasso paints a canvas blue. Not just any blue, variations of Picasso blue. Vendor A get his hands on it just long enough to run it through his hi-res scanner. When Picasso’s not looking Vendor A hangs a printed copy of Picasso’s blue (a really nice Lexmark ink jet version) in his store where all of his customers and workers can enjoy it. Even puts a big title over the print saying, ‘enjoy Picasso now’ and everybody does. Now, step into the shoes of Picasso and ask how happy you are everybody is enjoying a (relatively BAD) facsimile of his art. Is the customer hurt by this (having such low expectations with regard to quality of work) or is Picasso hurt (perceived as creator of said facsimile)… or is everybody involved with art and culture hurt by this de-evolution?Young people! What to do! BUY the CD, roll around in the art, pour over the liner notes and CRANK that fucker on your home stereo! BUY tickets when they come to town and spread the word, dammit!Just doing my part to keep the music real and yes, I know this has nothing to do with the original post. Sorry about that.
Kay, I can’t afford my own Picasso, so I buy a poster/print of it to enjoy at home when I’m not down at the museum gaining the full experience. Sometime when I watch a movie, I just want to see things blow up, sometimes I want to be moved and have my thoughts provoked. Not every piece of music is the hight of the art form, nor does it need to be. Why pay (more) for the crap? I buy CD’s of bands I really like, and occasionally go to their concerts, but I won’t drop $20 bucks for a CD with 10 songs when I only like 1 of them. Record producers/labels need to stop whining, get with the times and spend their anti-pirating campaign money on more useful things like making it cheaper and easier for the user to get quality recordings of their individual favorite songs…or people are going to continue downloading it for nothing. iTunes is a good start.
MFH, you’ve missed my point and completely insulted producers of quality reproductions everywhere. I’m afraid our youth settles for something less than art having never actually heard a CD nor laid eyes on real art… ever…. in their lives.. because they think they are experiencing/appreciating all there is to the art. Spooky.As for purchasing only certain pieces of a single art work… Pink Floyd would have been pissed if The Wall wasn’t experienced in it’s correct context… in its entirety. Sure, you can watch a video of a single song or skip to the last song on the CD or even purchase a single track but you fail to gain the experience intended by the writer/composer and, therefore, something is lost in giving the audience a choice.I feel sad for our youth and worse for our artists.
Your point was well taken about youth missing the “art” of an album. I was just trying to say that one does not always need to “experience” the “art” of music. Sometimes, you just want something to groove to (do kids still say “groove to?”) on the bus, or at the gym. It is these occasions that I think it is worth purchasing a single track. I was not speaking of musicians of Pink Floyd’s caliber. Unfortunately most of the music out there today falls short of that standard. But also, not every work, even by “quality” artists, needs to be experienced as an entire album. Sometimes a single song is all you need. And my apologies to “producers of quality reproductions everywhere.”
i fucking hate the bastards that get on the bus blaring their fucking shitty music….why should i have to listen to your crap?
Whoa Kay! Please don’t assume I don’t know much about music quality just because I have an ipod! I actually AM excited that I found my mom’s old vinyl collection and DO buy Cd’s, not just for the liner notes and artwork but because I think the sound quality is better. Which is why, again, I’m excited about the vinyl. Maybe you can hear the static and crackle, but the actual lack of overproduction can be heard and I like the more “real” sound of the music anyway.I DO buy the tickets, see the shows, and spread the word because even though I’m young, I believe in the same things you’re talking about. To me, my ipod is just a more convenient way of carrying what I want to listen to around with me, even if the quality is a little subpar.
Pete, you said “You have to really drop the quality down before you notice the difference.” That’s my point. You don’t notice much but your brain does because it’s busy filling in all the information allowing you to think you’re actually hearing the full spectrum of sound (sight also works in this fashion).Comparing analogue sound (vinyl) to digital is comparing apples and oranges so if we already compromise sound quality in order to digitize it and put it on a CD you’re saying it’s perfectly okay to compress it further (any mp3, wma, etc format). Our youth agrees and that’s my beef. (as per my analogy, they’re satisfied by prints and don’t see the point of experiencing art)Even though drive space is cheap and today’s mp3 players come with GB’s of space people, especially our youth, download and rip mp3’s not wav files/lossless formats.
Just to add…Kay “The Wall” did not have a bunch of crappy songs stacked around 1 or two good songs…it was good the entire way through. Nowadays it seems perfectly acceptable to create an album with piss-poor songs taped on to a great seller…so people are not so pleased when in the end…they paid $20+ for one or two songs.Everyone is right when they say the music industry has to step up to the plate and offer what the consumer wants…or go broke and out of business. The public majority has spoken A LONG TIME AGO but the industry has hardly changed (as a whole, there are some artists that have bucked the trend, but they are the exception not the rule). They are asking for their marketingprofit scheme to be disregarded and the songs obtained any way other than providing the money sucking losers even one cent.
The public majority only likes a few different songs anyway. Nickleback has recorded the same 3 songs 40 different ways and they’re all ‘hits’. It’s the real writers and minority public who still have a sense of art appreciation and deserve to have the industry not give in.
I certainly don’t listen to my walkman for the quality of the recording… You think going from vinyl to CD/CD to MP3 is bad, get yourself a walkman and listen to an old tape! And wasn’t that really the plan we were going for? Get out the cassettes and ghetto blasters and turn up that crackly old muffled music!
Old tapes are awesome. Nothing like hissing and popping to add to someone like Sonic Youth with all the feedback and noise.
Kay, there are mp3 players that also will play lossless formats. And realistically, a high quality mp3 is more than good enough unless you’re rocking out to those $200 dj style headphones. At 256 kbit/s, 44khz stereo, you’re getting pretty much everything. You have to really drop the quality down before you notice the difference.And a CD is already a downgraded copy of the original song. A high quality vinyl with a very good record player and high end speakers (hint: you won’t find them in Future Shop) is the closest thing to what the original. So you’re Picasso analogy is pretty weak. If you’re informed and now what you’re doing, a digital file is a perfectly convenient way to listen to tunes.But yeah, there is that lack of liner notes. Although most aren’t worth looking at anyway. But NIN had that recent release of Ghosts that came with all these great liner notes, and only cost $5.
Some of us have our MP3 players (Walkmans, for you old school types) on and cranked in order to drown out the kids who won’t stop whining, or the person chewing gum with their mouth open, or the whiny mother of the brain damaged kid (oh, but smoking a ton of pot while pregnant was a brilliant plan) and just trying to get some peace. If I didn’t have to listen to forty-five minutes of *smack smack smack smack smack* from miss cud chewer who can’t close her yap, or “Sweetie, come sit by mommy” while her brat pulls the cord for every stop between when I get on and when she and her spawn get off at Mumford, or the people who have to discuss their private lives full voice, maybe I could leave the MP3 player in my tote, switched off, and read my book in peace. Until then you’ll just have to deal with my German Dancehall Reggae turned loud enough to drown them out.