From "Prince Charming" to "Goodnight, San Francisco" by way of "Bridge of Spies"

I'm listening to the Bittersweets latest album "Goodnight, San Francisco" which I downloaded from e-music. At the end of last week I got confirmation that I would be reviewing them their debut London gig at the Borderline this Wednesday and even though both their albums are available through Amazon the chances of me taking delivery and having a proper listen before the gig would be slim. The ability to download it will make my life a whole lot easier.

Over the weekend, on a bus from Kilburn to Shepherds Bush, I had a conversation about the relative merits of CD's over downloads which followed on from me revealing that T'Pau's "Bridge Of Spies" was the first CD I bought. Despite still buying vinyl for many years I was a quick convert to CD's, not because I preferred digital to analogue, not because I thought they would last forever and not because they were new, it was just because what I'm listening to has always been far more important than what format it was in or, for that matter, what I was listening to it on.

I had a friend who spent more money on his car stereo than I did on my car (in fact, he probably still does). He had a Kenwood head unit, pre amps, power amps, bass bins tweeters, woofers and mid ranges they were crossed over and had custom a custom made shelf. I was once earnestly told that you just had to have a graphic equaliser in a car because of it's shape. At this time his music collection consisted of Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell" and Billy Joel's "Greatest Hits Volume I & II", that's all, nothing else (he gave his record deck away as he didn't own a record). I'm not questioning the quality of his collection: I owned three copies of "Bat Out Of Hell" (three different labels, orange, black and blue) and, despite having all of Joel's albums, I still bought the Greatest Hits album as there were two new tracks on it, but rather the quantity of it in relation to the expense of his car stereo.

I must confess though, I always had a much lower opinion of cassettes. I have lost many a good album through leaving it on a dashboard and now wish that I'd taken the same amount of care with them as I did with my vinyl, which is still in pretty good nick. "Prince Charming" by Adam and the Ants was the first album I bought and it is true that no other format has ever been able to match a gate fold sleeve; unfolding a CD insert just is not the same, neither is a jpeg. The biggest downside of downloads is that there are no sleeve notes. This may be unique to e-music (I don't use I-tunes or Amazon or any other download service) and is the gripe I have with them. I pay £11.99 a month for fifty downloads, which makes it about an album a week for £3.00. This pricing plan means that the major record labels will have nothing to do with them. This bothers me not a jot; there are more than enough independent releases to choose from.

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is the music; how you buy it, how you store it and how you play it is unimportant.