Gary Hutner is the publisher of 'The Record, The Item and The Banner ', and has a recurring column in these newspapers. His articles can be biting, funny, irreverant and have a punch with which the reader can identify. His columns will be available here on this website for your reading enjoyment.Courtesy of 'The Record'. The various newspapers cover the towns of Westboro, Shrewsbury, Northboro, Boylston, West Boylston, Clinton, Lancaster, Sterling, Berlin and Bolton |
- NEVER TOO OLD FOR NEW TOYS How often do we still feel like children? Some of us probably more often than others. I get that way about vacations or about new movies or even new toys.
Sure, the toys I’m talking about aren’t action figures or the latest board games, but they’re toys nonetheless. I get excited about new things. I see them advertised and have to have them. I’m Madison Avenue’s kind of guy.
When Macintosh introduced the iPod some time ago, it really didn’t register with me. I’ve traveled a long road with my music. At first it was 8-tracks, then it was albums and now it’s CDs. There are certain albums that I’ve purchased in all three formats. The music industry must love me as much as Madison Avenue does.
For some time now, I’ve been burning my own “ultimate” CDs. I used to make “ultimate” cassette tapes, but now that my car is equipped with a CD player, all those greatest hits tapes are languishing in an old chest of drawers in our basement.
Why did I need an iPod? So I could throw a bunch of songs onto a really small Walkman-type device? There was no pull there for me. Someone must’ve been doing some poor marketing, because it’s pretty easy to get me interested in just about anything.
Then several months ago, I started seeing the commercials for the iPod Shuffle. This pack-of-gum-sized device could hold 125 songs and would play them in a random order. It seems that the “shuffle” format on the iPod had proven extremely popular and this small offshoot capitalized on that.
Well, now I had some interest. I could program my own radio station. How cool! But 125 songs were too few. A 20 gigabyte iPod holds 5,000 songs. That, actually, sounded like too much. Even with all my CDs, I thought I’d have trouble filling that. And who has 5,000 songs they like that much?
So I started doing some math, some serious math. I counted my CDs and looked at quite a few of them. I figured that an average of four songs a CD made sense. Some albums had more than four songs I enjoyed, others had fewer, but that was a fair number.
While I love new toys, obsessive might be a better word to describe my antics leading up to this purchase.
Based on that “four” number, it looked to me like the 6 gigabyte iPod mini would do the trick. It can hold 1,500 songs. I could really build my “ultimate” radio station now.
After some shopping (there is no real shopping on the iPods, they’re priced the same everywhere), the iPod mini was brought home.
The obsessive-compulsive nature really kicked in once it was brought home. I’m working through the CDs now, alphabetically, putting artists on the iPod. I’m spending lots of late night hours at the computer compiling. After each session, I put in the earphones and enjoy my “ultimate, ultimate tape.” And the best part is that each time I listen, I get something a little different. One time it’s Elvis Costello followed by the Beatles and then the Pixies come in. The next time it’s The Cure, and then a Clash song, then a little Queen and then a new song by The Strokes.
My family has been looking at me cock-eyed, although the kids have been getting pretty interested. Andrew, 11, wants to get his own iPod shuffle and Claire, 8, has asked if I could put a little Avril Lavigne on the iPod mini.
Years ago when CBs were in, my friend Bob and I would take over a channel and play album tracks over the airwaves. We’d even take requests (“How about a little Lynyrd Skynyrd”?), until someone official sounding would come on and yell at us. Now, I’m doing it again…just this time I’m a little bit older, this station is for my ears alone and I’m teaching my children all about obsessive-compulsive behavior. What more could you ask for?
