On the demise of great song-writers … and of CDs and DVDs. A bit of music nostalgia.

And now Kris Kristofferson has died at the age of 88, another of the great poetic songwriters gone. Here’s a link to an article about his genius.

Back in 2018 a group of artists performed a concert of Joni Mitchell songs as a tribute for her 75th birthday. (The only non-Joni song was “Our House”, written by Graham Nash for and about Joni Mitchell.) Brandi Carlisle helped Kris Kristofferson perform Joni’s “I could drink a case of you”. Musically still wonderful but visibly confused at times. Music seemed to keep him going though. 

And now he’s gone to join Hank Williams and Leonard Cohen in the Tower of Song. But we have his albums! As we have many of the other greats.

According to this article by Tim Dowling, the CD is a thing of the past. Like vinyl, CDs are now only bought by obsessive music collectors. He writes about music in cars, looking back at the days when car “radios” were equipped with cassette players (I used to have to rewind a Carly Simon cassette again and again for Granddaughter Number One, then only 4 or 5 years old, so she good listen to “Itsy, bitsy, spider” as we drove along), later replaced by CD players. Now even in-car CD players have gone it seems. Goodness, I learnt much of my Italian listening to Michel Thomas CDs as I commuted to work. 

Tim Dowling used to select CDs to take with them when the family went on holiday, CDs in a special case with plastic wallets for each CD. I remember having one of those. We still have a few old cassettes kicking around of compliations of songs Phil would put together for when we went on family camping holidays. Driving to the south coast singing our heads off. As a consequence our offspring have a good knowledge of golden 

The son of an old friend of ours assures me that rap artists produce songs as poetic as did the great but rapidly diminishing singer-songwriters of my youth. I don’t believe him or, at any rate, I don’t agree with him. But perhaps I am prejudiced (the rhythm puts me off) or simply old-fashioned. 

Our daughter doesn’t have a CD player in her car, nor in her house as far as I am aware. I do know that she doesn’t have a DVD player. She has turned down offers of loans of DVDs of films or box sets, on the grounds that they don’t have the necessary equipment to play them. Everything is streamed and downloaded. But I think she is perhaps missing some classic films.She has playlists on her phone for when we go on road trips: silly songs for the small children, stories, music that the grown-ups might enjoy, including lots of artists I would otherwise be unaware of.  

Earlier I said that CDs are only bought nowadays by obsessives. I would like to amend that to “obsessives and Phil and me”. We still purchase CDs - after all, artists have put some thought into their compilation - and  DVDs for that matter, mostly of concerts as we too watch drama series online. Modern times!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!