Taking FLAC

I need to chill. Between the twin outrages of Donald Trump and the continued existence of the NRA, I'm going to blow a gasket. I detest the unpunished societal offenses committed by these entities.

They are horrors the combined imaginations of Edgar Allan Poe, William Peter Blatty and Stephen King never could have conceived.

I need something soothing to write about. Something lacking the bell-clanging urgency of gun control and looming fascism.

I know—I'll take sides in the FLAC – MP3 debate. Yeah. That's it.

Go ahead. Call me a glutton for punishment. No worries—I've said it many times myself.

I was late to the downloading party. I never grabbed a file off of Napster. I was a good boy. A respectful music fan. My introduction to digital downloading was e-Music, a service which offered (in retrospect) insufferably slow downloads to a set number of LPs each month.

So when I wanted the new Mogwai or Decemberists or Bettye LaVette release, I'd cue up the download before I went to bed and voila! It was ready to be ripped to a CD-R and playable in my car the next day.

(Most of the time, anyway.)

But then the Great Recession hit. And e-Music quickly became—even for a musiholic like myself—a non-essential expense.

Recession or not, my thirst for music continued. It demanded satiation. What was I to do?

In between my desperate attempts at locating even not-so-gainful employ, I discovered music sites and deciphered the intricacies of downloading and file conversion. I quickly discovered that FLAC-encoded files weren't transferable to CD-Rs and also weren't playable in my car or at home.

So they weren't very practical. And they took up a hell of a lot of room. And since I wasn't the sole user of the computer, installing a FLAC player and storing them there was not an option. So I ignored them and the raging arguments which advocated for them.

FLAC remained a speed bump I needed to cross before enjoying the ear candy the Internet was foisting upon my person.

I was entirely content with the studio recordings available for download at 320-bits. And the bootlegs whose bit-encryption was all over the map. 

I heard one twenty-eights that sounded like three-twenties and one ninety-twos that sounded absolutely pristine. I heard VBRs that sounded better than any of them. Given the enormous range of bootleg sources, it was difficult to assign one hard and fast standard to what sounded best.

Of course, sound is highly-subjective. What sounds good to me might sound like crap to you.

Muddying the waters still further is the fact that I am old. Really old. And that I've attended way too many concerts and spent way too much time in bars featuring live music and in clubs blasting dance music at unhealthy decibel levels.

So despite (or perhaps because of) my love of sound, I have not enjoyed it responsibly. I have overindulged. I have committed assault and battery upon my tympanic membranes.

But I should add that while I frequently experience difficulty discerning my mate's requests to take out the garbage or change the furnace filter, my ability to hear music remains remarkably intact.

This was confirmed when one day after an OS upgrade, I could play FLAC files on my computer.

And I was shocked. What I call 'the sound field' was deeper and wider than anything I had encountered with MP3s. Detail, space—all of it was heightened. OK. It was—and is—a richer listening experience. 

Uncle!

But naturally, there's a downside.

I still can't listen to FLAC files anywhere but on my computer. And when I want to recline on the couch with the newspaper or my current read and get lost in a favorite album, that is inconvenient.

Then there's the question of storage space. A cynic might say that after taking up three to four times the space of a conventional MP3 file, the least a FLAC-encoded file could do was sound better.

And they'd be right. After taking up that much space they ought to fold my laundry and do a little light housekeeping, too.

Yet even in my short experience, I realize they are disinclined to do so.

So I'll use FLAC where it makes the biggest difference—bootlegs. Where it enhances my favorite and most-treasured boots, it stays. With the added advantage that I can always convert it to an MP3 file when I want to listen elsewhere.

But studio releases? Well, not so much. Yeah, FLAC makes Wrecking Ball and Arkology and In a Silent Way sound even more amazing, but with a storage expense that really isn't cost-effective.

It's a twist on those old Miller Lite beer commercials. Yes, FLAC tastes great. Too bad it's not less-filling as well.

My Favorite CDs of 2013

With my fiftieth year as a pop music consumer just completed and access to my blog regained, I shall henceforth set about naming my ten favorite albums of 2013 forthwith.

But first, a brief review.

Albums continued their sales decline, as our attention and time-challenged societies made singles their preferred mode of consumption. Retrospectives and archival live albums aimed at baby boomers continued to constitute an increasing percentage of album-length releases.

Ditto box sets and "re-imagined" re-issues, which at times seemed to endlessly recycle period albums into multi-disc extravaganzas costing hundreds of dollars.

But not all were wanton cash grabs.

My favorite box set was Fisherman’s Box, a six-disc chronicle of the protracted recording sessions which yielded the Waterboy’s 1988 LP Fisherman’s Blues. The band moves effortlessly from folk to blues to the sixties-inspired pop that Karl Wallinger specialized in after he left to form World Party.

A reviewer on Amazon called this the ‘Irish Basement Tapes’ and he wasn’t far off.

Given the magnificence of this music, you could be forgiven for wondering why the remainder of the Waterboy’s oeuvre isn’t more familiar. The vagaries of public taste, radio play and record company politics are the likely culprits (at least here in the U.S.), but whatever the Waterboy’s unfulfilled potential, Fisherman’s Box captures—however briefly—promise wildly and exuberantly fulfilled.

A tip of the hat goes to the multiple-disc edition of Bob Dylan's Self-Portrait, which shows this period to have been far-richer than some combination of Dylan and Columbia let on.

Robin Trower enjoyed a stellar solo career after leaving Procol Harum, plying Hendrix-inspired epics to rock audiences eager to continue that six-stringed ride.

State to State: Live Across America 1974 – 1980 offers an appealing cross section of live performances, including an exceptional 1974 show in Philadelphia. The inclusion of a fiery 1975 London show would make this just about perfect, but I’m not complaining.

And neither will you. It's the archival live album of the year.

In an era given to hip hop, rockified country and featherweight pop, rock refuses to die.

The following list reflects rock in all its current variants, along with examples of the rhythm and blues (admittedly of the blue-eyed variety) and country and western which flavored it along the way.

Time constraints forbid me from offering the capsule descriptions seen in years past. But I promise that all are worthy of your time and attention.


1. Big Scary – Not Art

2. White Denim – Corsicana Lemonade

3. Richard Thompson – Electric

4. Mogwai – Les Revenants Original Soundtrack

5. The Bamboos – Fever in the Road

6. Los Lobos – Disconnected in New York City

7. Waxahatchee – Cerulean Salt

8. The Veils – Time Stays, We Go

9. Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell – Old Yellow Moon

10. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories


Honorable Mention:

My Darling Clementine - The Reconciliation?