Ever go through those periods where you listen to the same song over and over again, on repeat, until it gets to the point where you just associate that song with a period of your life?

I’ve probably listened to the Stones’ “Rocks Off” thirty times in the past two days. So many songs off Exile have specific memories associated with them, but five years from now when I hear “Rocks Off,” I’ll think of this summer, and what’s happening right now. (Could be a lot worse, right?)

I can back up through the past year or so and link certain songs to what was going on (not that that’s special, I imagine most people can).

For reference, here’s a list:

The Clash — “Death or Glory”
Elliott Smith — “Alameda”
Pavement — “Spit On Stranger”
Beastie Boys — “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”
The Decemberists — “Don’t Carry It All”

Also, if you haven’t read Keith Richards’ book Life, go grab it. Now. If I had a time machine, there’s no doubt I’d swing through the South of France in 1972.

Years ago, I used to live in downtown Boston just off the Common. It’s right in the middle of town, and I walked through it to get something to eat, go to a movie, or take the subway. I work in the music business, and month after month, year after year, we’re presented with new music. Some of it’s niche, some of it has the hopes of thousands riding on its back.

I remember at one point one of our record labels talking about a new band, LCD Soundsystem.

They’re a cool band from Brooklyn.
It’s a little different, electronic. We’re really excited about it.
It’s the kind of music that people would want to play at parties.

When the advance album showed up, it looked different than a lot of the other music we received. Dark green heavy cardboard, with an embossed mirror ball, and the band’s logo on the front. That’s it. It stood out.

Shortly after that, I had to take the subway somewhere. I always used a subway ride to check out new music. I grabbed the LCD album, transferred it to my iPod, and walked out the door. I hadn’t reached the sidewalk when the little yelp that kicks off “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House” started.  Walking through the park and onto the subway, the song burned into my mind.  I don’t hear it anymore without flashing back to that walk, and while I’m not on the Common as much as I used to be, I almost always have it pop into my mind when I walk through.

Describing new music can be tedious, but it didn’t take long for the explanations to click. There was something instantly catchy and appealing about what I was hearing. A heavy, techno-ish beat, tons of percussion, and someone half-singing, half-talking over the music. A few falsetto squeals thrown in for good measure. I got it. I didn’t know James Murphy from the guys across from me on the subway. I never would have guessed that he’d remind me more of someone I’d play darts with at the pub, than a mustachioed Brooklynite.

Earlier tonight I drove into Boston, parked my car, and walked across the Boston Common to see LCD Soundsystem play at the Orpheum Theater. I had seen them years ago when their first album came out. I remember being struck by what a bandleader Murphy was on stage. Beyond singing, he was moving around, directing the band. He was a conductor. I loved the show, but the performance they put on now—years later—is in a different league.

From the first notes, the show is blast of lights, and grooves. Deep grooves. The stage was filled with vintage electronic equipment that would make Jonny Greenwood jealous. The band is super tight, with Murphy singing over the music, and whaling away on the percussion kit next to him.

I bumped into an old friend of mine from the Boston music scene. At one point he turned to me and said: “You know, we’ve been seeing shows together in Boston for fifteen years.” I know, I can’t believe it. “This is something huh?” Sure is.

It felt like it was 110° in the theater. People were dancing and dripping sweat. I was dancing and dripping sweat—and those are two things I generally try to avoid. There was a moment that I had sweat dripping into my eyes at the same time that the music was giving me the chills. That’s exciting, and that’s something that reminds you that it’s all worth it.

It’s really easy to be jaded about music.  I’ve seen a lot of shows over the years.  Only the best ones leave the crowd with a shared sense of euphoria when they walk out. I felt it when I walked out of the theater.  I felt it when I walked across the Common back to my car. And I felt it when those first notes of “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House” came through the speakers on the ride home.

Love it or hate it, everyone seems to have an opinion about Twitter right now.  One of the results of this Twitter boom is seeing well known people jump on board, and watching how they use it.  For some it’s a one way window into the little details of their lives, and for others it’s a way to actually connect with people on their own terms.

Coming from the music industry, I’ve been especially fascinated with a lot of the musicians, and how they are using it to change the way that they interact with fans.  If you can’t go two feet without hearing about Twitter these days, then you can’t go ten feet without hearing about the changes that the music business—really the entire entertainment industry—is painfully going through.  There’s an enormous paradigm shift happening in the music industry.  Some artists are jumping on this opportunity to bypass a lot of BS and connect directly with their audience.  They’re takin’ it to the streets—metaphorically speaking—in 140 characters or less.

Enter Bob Lefsetz, the curmudgeonly old-school critic of all things music.  Say what you want about him, but people at all levels of the music industry are aware of what he has to say.  And for as much as Lefsetz makes me cringe sometimes, he’s also dead fucking spot on pretty often.

Not many weeks go by where Lefsetz won’t post an email from a big name musician or producer or label head.  He recently shared an email from Amanda Palmer that I haven’t been able to get out of my head.  Palmer has been going through a very public feud with her record label, going so far as to ask them to drop her.  She’s also very active on Twitter.  These things as, as you may have guessed, are related.

Palmer tells stories of fans lining up to meet her and buy her album.  They follow her on Twitter and ask her questions.  And she answers them.  She shares little bits of random info and photos and thoughts. A lot of fans would love to receive this stuff from their favorite artists, but this unrestricted avenue through which info could flow didn’t exist in quite the same way until recently.  Sure it could be posted on a website, but how many major artists are actually editing their own site?  Now anyone that can text message can send a TwitPic photo ten seconds after it happens.

As Palmer explained to Lefsetz, when she was in Australia recently, she did an impromptu gathering with fans in a park, announced only via Twitter.  150 kids showed up to have their records signed.

“LIFE IS BECOMING AWESOME.”

“no manager knew! i didn’t even warn or tell her! no agents! no security! no venue! we were in a fucking public park!
life is becoming awesome.”

I haven’t been able to get that line out of my head.  I work for a record company, and I’ll tell you, the chances of getting something like that to happen from my end are pretty slim.  It’s not to say that people wouldn’t like the idea, or that we couldn’t try to make it happen.  It’s just that there are too many people involved.  Too many people to say no. If we set up a promotion or event with an artist, it’s essentially on our terms.  If Amanda Palmer wants to choose a time and a place to meet people, and only tell them via Twitter, those are her terms.  And that’s pretty awesome.

And it’s not just Amanda Palmer.  Look at Lily Allen, and her scavenger hunts for tickets before every show—all via Twitter (or excuse me, “Twitta”).  I get a good laugh when I think of pitching an idea like that.

Or Dave Matthews, with his oddball humor—a perfect fit for this type of communication.  A lot of the responses he gives to people feel like a more authentic connection than physically standing in front of him for five seconds and getting a record signed.

So what does this all mean?  Does it mean that all you need to be a successful musician is a solid list of Twitter followers, an iPhone and a good sense of humor?  No, of course not.

There’s a reason that people are passionate about Amanda Palmer, and her music comes first.  She’s built the foundation.  Could she be successful from here on out with no label?  By just touring and putting out releases on her own that her fans buy to support her?  Yeah, I think she probably could.  Could she start over today with none of that history and achieve the same results with only those tools?  I tend to doubt it, but I’m not so sure.  Someone’s going to do it.

So as frustrating as it can be to see a respected member of the old-guard media make a fool out of themselves when talking about something “new” like Twitter, it makes it that much more exciting to see more and more well known artists grab hold and use this new technology to connect with their audience in a way that didn’t exist a few years ago.  In that sense,  I completely agree with Amanda Palmer, life is becoming awesome.

I grew up in a small Connecticut town.  My options for buying new music were limited in the eighties and early nineties .  There was the Record Town a few towns over, and the Record Town even further away at the mall.  That was it.

Before I was old enough to drive, I’d have to get one of my parents to bring me to get a new album every now and then.  I specifically remember being thrilled to find Achtung Baby on the wall when it came out.  Years after that I remember asking the kid that worked there to dig around in the back room to find the one copy of Phish’s Junta that the store received.  He’d never heard of them.

When I got older and was able to drive myself around, a buddy and I discovered a real Indie record store half an hour away.  They sold live bootlegs, which back then had to be imported from Europe.  This was a whole new world.  They were pricey, so you better take your time, choose, and get something good.  Over the years my friend bought tons of great Pearl Jam and Nirvana live discs.  I bought old Dead and Dylan shows.  The guys that ran the shop turned me onto Dylan’s famous ‘66 show from the Royal Albert Hall (“Judas, I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!”) when it was just part of the great unreleased Dylan lore.

We’d drive around with a handful of tapes, and later CDs, and listen to them over and over and over again.  Supply was limited, and you became very familiar with what you had.  The concept of actually wearing out a cassette was very real.

Skip ahead to today.  Generally speaking, almost every piece of music you would ever want is literally a few mouse clicks away—whether you live in Connecticut, Los Angeles, or North Dakota.  Everything is at your finger tips.  If you take away the price barrier (which, let’s face it, is a big reality) anyone can have access to as much music as they want, with the only limit being how fast they can download it, and how much free space is on their hard drive.

So the question that I keep running into with some of my most serious music friends is this:  Is this the golden age of being a music fan?

You can read about an obscure jazz musician that influenced your favorite artist and be listening to his work minutes later.  I’m pretty sure that Record Town didn’t even have a jazz section.

In a lot of ways, it doesn’t get much better than that.  But still, is there something missing from the experience?  With everything so easily available, it’s almost overwhelming.  ”I downloaded that, but haven’t listened to it yet” was not something that you heard when you had to plan out your monthly trips to the record shop up the coast.  When you decided to buy something you listened to what you bought.  They you listened to it again.  And again.

Does that mean there aren’t kids out there that are listening to Terrapin Station endlessly on repeat, or locked in their rooms trying to find all the hidden secrets on the new Mastodon record?  Of course there are.  But I know that when I fire up iTunes it’s so easy for me to skips tracks and jump from artist to artist that I find myself doing it all the time.  And I’d guess many others are doing the same.

The fundamental ways in which I listen to music have changed, but along with that, the musical possibilities have expanded endlessly.

I’ve heard passionate arguments from serious folks on both sides of this discussion, and I don’t think either is right or wrong.  Ultimately, access to a wide range of music—that would have been impossible to find not many years ago—is a good thing for any serious music fan.  I just need to stop and remember how some of my favorite music of all time was burned into my head over and over again when I was a kid, because that’s a good thing too.

Man, it hit me hard last night.  I went to the new House of Blues on Lansdowne Street to see Bloc Party. Before the show we’d been talking about the music scene in Boston, and how it’s changed.  Someone mentioned Mama Kin, Aerosmith’s old Lansdowne Street club that I used to go to in college.  And of course the House of Blues is built on the spot that used to be Avalon and Axis and many more longtime Boston music venues before them.

I guess I’ve been in Boston for a long time, but I rarely stop to think about it.  Going to college here in the mid-nineties, all I did was go to shows around town.  All these old clubs.  A lot of them still there, some of them now the House of Blues.

Standing at the Bloc Party show got me thinking.  The kids down in front jumping up and down to the music; college sophomores that’ll hop on the T after the show and go back to their dorms.  Those kids used to be me.  That’s a fairly generic and clichéd thought—but not one that I have very often.  The thing that fucked with me is that I was those kids when I was in college, and that was a long time ago at this point.  Going on fifteen years ago, my god.

The funny thing is, that period of my life—all that time I spent bouncing around clubs in Boston—lead pretty directly to where I am now.  I met people through that scene that ultimately lead to me getting a job in the music industry.  A job that I still have.  I’ve been at this gig for the better part of a decade at this point, which I guess is no small feat given the insane changes the industry has gone through during that time.  I mean right now, in 2009, it’s hard to imagine the iTunes Music Store not existing.  It’s downright insane to remember the fact that the iPod didn’t even exist when I started this job.

It’s also crazy to realize that the kids jumping up and down in the front rows of the Bloc Party show were maybe 12 years old when I started this job, because it doesn’t feel like that long ago.  And I don’t feel that different.

Fifteen odd years is a good chunk of time, especially when it’s from your late teens to your early thirties. Don’t get me wrong, this is no “oh to be young again” lament.  I like right where I am.  I’ve been lucky. I’m still going to the same clubs and walking down the same streets—except now I’m trying to remember where I parked the car and wondering if I’ll make it to the encore, instead of trying to remember what time the last train leaves.