Are You Experienced?

I’m calling all you musical heathens to repentance. Consider me a prophet of the Rock Gods sent to liberate you.

I was chastising someone the other day about her lack of musical prowess. “You’re one of those guys who buys whole albums still, aren’t you?” she asked in a particularly sassy rebuttal. Yes, I am one of those “guys who buys whole albums,” and let me tell you why: an album is supposed to be an experience.

I remember my parents’ old turntable very well. It was metallic gray and sat on top of their matching stereo system. I used to sit on the couch, entranced, listening to my father’s original vinyl of “Zoso” (what some of you might know as “Led Zeppelin IV,” or for the musically unaware it was the album that gave light to “Stairway to Heaven”). I would listen to the entire 45 minutes in silent wonder; absorbed into the album from the dirty guitar intro of “Black Dog” to the melodic strum of “Stairway,” at the end of which I would take my cue and flip the record to finish with the pounding, seven-minute, blues anthem (and my personal favorite from LZ) “When the Levee Breaks.”

Even now, decades after my first love-affair with Led Zeppelin, I make time to “experience” every album I buy. It’s more than respect to the artistry of it, but any real artist worth their salt makes albums that should be listened to in their entirety. An album is a product as a whole. Listening to only one song is like buying your favorite chapter out of a book. Yeah, it might be good, it might speak to you, but it’s only a single part of a greater work.

Maybe you can get away with your single-track iTunes purchase with “Nickelback” or “Beyonce” but there is a whole world of music that needs to be experienced as a sum total. How many hits would have remained undiscovered if a DJ hadn’t simply flipped the record over to see what was on the B-Side? Great music is waiting to be listened to, but you’re not going to find it if you only pick the mainstreamed hits you heard on the radio. Go on Philistines, go have an experience.