South Jersey music lovers comment on streaming, music-listening habits
Written by Vincent Jackson of The Press of Atlantic City
If Steve Ball wanted to know what his father was up to at work, he would listen to albums. On records by jazz greats such as drummer Gene Krupa, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, he could hear his father at his job.
Ball, of Atlantic City, is the son of Ronald “Ronnie” Ball, a jazz pianist, who played on albums by these artists and others. As a result, his son grew up playing vinyl, gently putting the needle on records, listening to the entire recordings and storing them properly afterward, so they weren’t damaged.
And now, when Ball, 59, is at home after working as a table game supervisor at an Atlantic City casino, he is playing music every waking hour.
Ball frequents Tunes in Northfield and specializes in rock and jazz from 1970 to 1979 on CD and vinyl. While he admires contemporary acts such as Beck, Kate Bush and Nas, 1970s music has a special appeal because it was made with less concern for commercial considerations, he said.
And when he listens to his music, he does it an album at a time.
“It’s easier to put on a record and let it play,” Ball said. “I think the album has a lot of value.”
But that attitude may make Ball an anomaly. In an age of of MP3s, streaming and YouTube, the idea of listening to an album or CD from beginning to end can seem so ... well, so 1970s.
As recently as 2006, record companies still reaped $9.4 billion from CD sales, according to the New York Times. By last year, that figure had dropped 84 percent to $1.5 billion.
The shift to streaming content has resulted in the number of downloads, once viewed as the music industry savior, falling for three consecutive years with no sign of recovery, the Times said.
All that may help explain why Chicago-based hip hop recording artist Chance the Rapper, 23, releases his music on mixtapes exclusively through Apple. He told Rolling Stone magazine last year that the music industry is dead, and there is no reason to sign to a label.
Superstar rapper Kanye West released his latest full-length recording, “The Life of Pablo,” this year. Neither physical or digital copies of the album are available for sale outside of West’s website, apart from very briefly being on sale on the streaming service Tidal. Since February, West has updated the recording three times.
“I was thinking about not making CDs ever again... only streaming,” West tweeted in March.
For many young, multitasking people, listening to a full-length recording by a single artist in one sitting seems to make as much sense as writing letters with a typewriter.
A.J. Reynolds, 17, of Linwood, likes all sorts of music. He can hear whatever he wants whenever and wherever he wants by making use of Pandora and YouTube. The Mainland Regional High School senior has never listened to an album from beginning to end.
Patty Blee, 53, of Buena, has been playing music professionally for more than 30 years. She spent her most of her formative preteen and teen years during the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s, when such landmark albums such as Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” and Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” were considered essential listening.
“That was revolutionary, speaking of someone’s inner life, and the subjects were fascinating to me as a kid not having gone through those experiences,” Blee said. “And I listened to them as there was wisdom to be gleaned from them. These people are telling me the secrets of life and what pitfalls to avoid and what things to admire in the world.”
A singer-songwriter in her own right, Blee released a CD, titled “Disguise,” nationally through Treasure Records in 2002.
“When you recorded back then, you thought in terms of a single. After that, it was how do the songs fit together to make a cohesive whole,” Blee said.
“That’s what an album is. It’s like a photo album. It tells the story about that period of time. That’s why it’s called a record. It’s a record of time. And it’s a period, like all art, that is universal.”
Nancy Malcun, 27, is young enough to be a part of the millennial generation that is much more concerned about singles than albums.
Malcun, of Absecon, was 12 when the iPod came out, but she still has a whole book of CDs that she listens to. Malcun is a singer-songwriter who has been making her living playing live in southern New Jersey for the past four years. For her, listening to entire albums was educational. She would study how the singers vocalized their thoughts.
A 2007 Egg Harbor Township High School graduate, Malcun released a six-song, pop-rock extended play CD, titled “Only the Beginning,” in 2014. She plans to release a full-length recording of her songs next year even as some famous artists are walking away from distributing their material that way. For her, the album format still matters.
“Part of it is holding a physical copy in your hand,” said Malcun. “I always wanted to make an album.”