The Big Rewind, or Staples and its Evil Music Pens!

Well I didn’t work in a Blockbuster; I worked at Staples back in my hometown of Columbus. While there I was a both a clerk and Office Supplies person, so where does media come into this? Well for one I got to listen to my “favorite” twenty songs about eight hours a day and even less songs during the Holiday season. And to also add to that I got to listen to these great singing pens at our checkout counters. Nope they didn’t play good music; they only played High School Musical and Miley Cyrus….ugh. To make these pens play music all you had to do was click the pen and away they went! And what did everyone do when they came up to the register? Press the damn pens! So guess what I would have stuck in my head the rest of the day? My favorite part about these pens though were when people would press one then look right at me and say “wow that has to get annoying” and then proceed to press another pen. We as the employees had fun messing with each other though when it came to these pens. We would go up to the service desk to ask a question and right before we left we would hit the pen and walk away laughing. Of course karma catches up and we’ll get that customer with the kid who wants to play with all thirty pens and once. So there’s my story, but where does it all lead? Well the thoughts that always occurred to me during this time were “is this where music is heading?” and “who is the defining musician in our generation?” To tackle the first question I have to say if this is here music is heading please let me off the rollercoaster I don’t want to be on this ride anymore. I was brought up listening to the good stuff, The Beatles, The Who, ACDC all the classics as we call them now. As I look at music today I see an upsurge in pop and hip-hop music while the punk rock and just rock in general seem to be falling to the wayside. I mean my two favorite bands are Taking Back Sunday and Blink 182, but yet when I tell some people older than me about them they of course don’t know who they are. It’s taken four albums for Taking Back Sunday to finally be heard on the radio and Blink 182 just got back together from breaking up a few years back. Now I’m not claiming that these bands are the greatest in the world, because they really aren’t, but I’m merely giving an example that there many other groups out there that are not part of this new pop and hip-hop movement. It seems that every year or so there is a new music fad. The last few years it was country and even before that it was boy-bands. So where are we heading now? Some of the most popular artists are either Disney stars or rapping about something I can barley understand. Who knows maybe in a few years we’ll see a resurgence of these oldies bands or even a new fad will appear. My next thought was always about our generation’s defining musician or group. I know with my parents there is always The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Elvis, but who do I and others of my age have? Is it Kanye West? What about Justin Timberlake? Or even Miley? I really don’t know! There hasn’t been anyone I feel like that has stepped out of the spotlight and given me some proof that they should be that artist, except Kanye but his ego is too big for me to care. It’s something that I still don’t think has been answered and probably won’t be for many more years. So to tie this into A.O. Scott’s article. Records, CD’s orMP3’s? I’ve seen over the years this strange re-emergence of Records. While in Best Buy I was seeing bands like Green Day and Nickelback had actual records out and they were placed next to The Beatles and Steppin’ Wolf. This was while I was listening to music on my iPod while looking at the CD’s; talk about all the formats being together all at once. Its obvious MP3’s are what’s in right now and CD’s are dying off while Records are coming back for some reason. I have a roommate who will refuse to use programs like iTunes to legally download anything, even if it’s free. When I ask why he mumbles something about DRM and other things I have no idea about and carries on. So where are we heading when it comes to formats? I still like having a CD in case something goes wrong on my computer but I know others who hate anything about digital music because of the quality and will go and buy records instead. Also what comes next after the MP3, I know I’ve started to see the Mv4 format a lot, but what’s next?