Being an Audio Luddite

Those of you who didn't live through the era of cassette tapes won't understand the chaos, anxiety and pain that the picture accompanying this post conveys. Those of you who did will remember.......

I've always loved music and as a teenager I used to stay up listening to John Peel of an evening, usually taping the 2nd hour and listening back when I got home from school the next day. But in my late 20s and early 30s I went through what I call my audio luddite phase. It was structured and ordered and more than a little bit anal:

  • Vinyl only. Cassette was acceptable for recording and in the car.
  • You listened to the songs in the context the artist presented them, as part of an album. So I didn't do mix tapes, hits albums or best ofs. There are probably 1oos of albums where I could tell you the next song if you named a song on it !!!
  • You carved out time to listen and sat and listened.

When I got my first house I splashed out on an audiophile setup. Linn turntable, Naim amps and speakers, solid core wiring and special stands for everything that were spiked and balanced. I even had a separate power spur taken off the fuse box that just ran the stereo !!!!

When CDs came out I ignored them (digital CD is lower quality than analog vinyl so of course I would) and I think it was 1996 before I had a CD player. I embraced digital music more quickly, because it allowed me to listen on the move, but I turned up my nose at playlists and continued to listen, an album at a time, well into the 21st century.

Driving to Stoke

Looking back on that time, it was one of the many things that I used to do to control my environment. It meant there was always something known and predictable happening and if everything around me was kicking off, I knew that when All Along the Watchtower faded out, Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) would start up (Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland). What I didn't know then, was what I was missing out on, both from a musical and a wellbeing perspective.

Fast forward to today. I've just driven up to Stoke and I'm sitting in my Premier Inn room writing this. I held off writing something this week because I knew I'd get inspiration from the drive. It's 2026, I have an Apple Music subscription and I love a playlist ! Today's was one of my own called 'Car Solo', which I use when, surprise surprise, I'm driving on my own. It has 248 songs and is just under 20 hours long. It's basically all the songs I love from the main bands I like and it needs expanding. It goes against the audio luddite bit of me but it means that even the hardest of motorway drives is a joy. I laugh, sing and even cry sometimes, depending on the songs that come up. Because as well as being a playlist convert, I also always run them on shuffle !!!!!!!

Can you imagine the jump, from listening to albums, in order and often artists by album, in order, I'm now doing playlists on shuffle. It's a pretty big leap in listening habits and I feel I can say with confidence that the audio luddite part of me is not in charge of my listening anymore.

So I'm on the M5, approaching the junction with the M6 for the first time in quite a while and the (nerdy) voice in my head says:

Isn't it weird how shuffle seems to defy statistical probability ?

I'd had 3 David Bowie tracks in the previous 20 minutes but there are only 6 Bowie track on the playlist. What's the chances of that ? That thought then took me back to all the other times I have thought something similar and I realised it happens a lot, possibly all of the time. I never skip tracks so there is no way Apple has learned that there are certain ones that are more liked, or has it !

So after mulling on that one for a while something else popped into my head.

Isn't it amazing how shuffle seems to throw up the right tracks for your mood most if not all of the time ?

As it's a playlist of favourites, you might think that is obvious, but I have a wide range of genres of music in there and it just seems to keep getting it right. I was having a leisurely drive and it gave me a the right soundtrack to make the journey better. Again, I did a bit of digging in memory and that seems to always happen as well.