As I’ve chronicled here on Collectors’ Quest, I’ve gone through significant music collecting phases – tapes to vinyl, vinyl to CD, CD to mp3, mp3 back to vinyl and tapes, back to mp3 – but I think I’ve found a fair balance between all of the media at this point. For real this time – though nothing’s as romantic as a big ol’ shiny, spinning record.

It wasn’t too long ago that musician Beck started making a concerted effort to reinvigorate music as an artform. He wanted music to once again become a unique experience and an exciting, ever-changing and interactive art – something that couldn’t just be downloaded for free, fought over, or constantly homogenized. He sparked an intellectual exploration of music and the things tangentially related to it, and it’s slowly starting to catch on in a more mainstream fashion. The live aspect of Beck’s exploration was demonstrated by his appearance on Saturday Night Live, when his two performances were accompanied by a simultaneous puppet show of the band, and a dinner table rhythm section that pounded out his song on silverware and served a turkey – though strange stage performances are nothing new for Beck.

While the performance was certainly different, and probably didn’t appeal to everyone, I found it to be immensely inspiring. How does this intellectual exploration extend to collecting CDs?

Well, I’ve made it a personal policy to only collect CDs that offer a little something ‘extra’. Here’s a list of neat CDs that provide content that can’t be downloaded.

- The tribute CD ‘Where’s Neil When You Need Him?’ is based on a lyric by Tori Amos about her relationship with comic author Neil Gaiman, who is most noted for his epic comic work ‘Sandman’, as well as movies like ‘Stardust’ and ‘MirrorMask’. While Gaiman’s work always has a dark edge and skews towards the gothic, how would this be reflected in CD form, aside from the music? When I received the CD in the mail, I thought that there was some kind of error, since the usually-shiny surface of the CD was a solid black. After I dubiously slid it into my computer, never expecting to be able to remove it again, and the music began to play, and the aesthetic innovation of the CD charmed me.

- Years ago, Barenaked Ladies’ ‘Born on a Pirate Ship’ gave me a surprise when I slipped it into a computer. An entire multimedia program sprung onto the screen, including a biography, music videos, comics, hidden songs, photos, and even a quiz where answering all of the questions correctly would yield a semi-nude photo of the band – much to my questionable delight. Plus, it’s a pretty good album – probably the very last of their REALLY good albums, followed by a few years of homogenization.

- CD releases by jazz musician Iain Ballamy and Allen Spiegel Fine Arts usually come packaged in handsome boxes, usually with elaborate artworks and a beautiful presentation. I don’t even love the music – I just love the boxes and the artwork by Dave McKean. Among the titles that include this presentation are ‘Pepper Street Interludes’, pictured at left, which is a beautiful jazz clarinet album. Other titles include ‘Food’, ‘Food 2 : Organic and GM’, and a reading / performance of Neil Gaiman’s comic ‘Signal to Noise’.

- Kaki King’s new CD ‘Dreaming of Revenge’ comes in a cardboard, folding case – which is my favorite kind of CD case. It’s better for the environment than plastic, it’s slimmer than a plastic case, and while it doesn’t wear as well as plastic, it looks better. Slipped inside of the front cover is a series of punch-out pieces to build a mobile. Building this mobile and sending a photo to Kaki enters you into a contest with unspecified rules and rewards.

- Beck’s most recent CD, ‘The Information’ included a cover that was little more than a large, fold-out piece of graph paper – but inside the CD case was a sheet of stickers that could be used to create your own CD cover. This also came with an invitation to send your designs to Beck himself. Again, this is an excellent album, even aside from the innovative packaging design. Retentive person that I am, my sticker sheet remains safely intact. Sorry, Beck.

- Bjork’s recent CD ‘Volta’ includes a cover that opens like a pair of double doors, sealed with a sticker of Bjork (which must be delicately peeled), and has interesting fold-out artwork on the inside. The case is also mostly cardboard. There’s something about the process of peeling the CD open that’s visceral – not unlike The Velvet Underground’s ‘Peel Slowly To See’ box set cover, in which a banana colorform could be peeled off to reveal an image underneath.

- They Might Be Giants have also included multimedia content with their CDs. All of their childrens’ albums, ‘No!’, ‘Here Come the ABCs’ and ‘Here Come the 123s’, either come with DVDs that have bonus music and videos, or include a kid-friendly multimedia presentation on the disc itself. All of these things probably add immeasurable value when you’re trying to keep an energetic kid bus, and preferably learning things at the same time.
- David Byrne’s CD ‘Feelings’ used the construction of the plastic CD tray as a kind of ‘spin the wheel’ device (which, it informed you, would damage the CD – so proceed at your own risk). The CD was printed with an arrow, and once you broke off the holding teeth of the CD tray, you could spin the disc, and the arrow would eventually land on one of many ‘feelings’ around the edge of the printed tray artwork. David Byrne is a high-concept kind of guy. Special editions of his CD ‘Look Into the Eyeball’ had lenticular covers, in which his eyes would follow you around.

It’s these kinds of CDs that are still worth collecting for me, even if they do take up space in the physical world and mp3s are SO convenient. They allow for a deeper multimedia experience that ultimately enriches the perception of the music.

Should artists have to provide this extra stuff in order to convince people to buy instead of steal? No, but it’s not the artists that have injured the music industry. After all, it’s not the artists who insisted that it become an ‘industry’ in the first place.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 2:00 am and is filed under collecting fyi, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.