Listen without prejudice

As reported here, the inaugural Real Record Club get-together took place in Cardiff the Sunday before last. Organiser Steve Shepherd has thanked those who attended on the club's blog, but one resident of the Welsh capital who very definitely wasn't there was one of my regular festival companions Suresh, who took exception to much of Shepherd's preview piece for the Guardian. His responses, initially posted on Facebook, are reproduced below, together with added comments from me. Let the debate begin...

"Firstly I disagree with the notion that MP3s have worse sound than a record. A 320 mbps MP3 is indistinguishable from an LP (or CD). (In fact there's scientific data on this). To tell the difference you need a massively well-trained ear and tremendously good speakers. Most people have bollocks speakers or stupid earbuds, so listening to an LP makes no difference to me."

Fair comment, personally speaking. While I've no doubt that music really can sound better when played using superior quality equipment and in a particular format, I'm not a sufficiently discerning consumer. The album's the thing, not the kit - I'm a music snob, not a hi-fi snob. My general dislike for MP3s isn't to do with sound quality (see below).

"Clearly I am in the MP3 generation but I love albums; I always listen to albums start to finish (if not interrupted); never have I pressed shuffle on my iTunes, except for at a party. The format of one's media doesn't have to affect how one listens to it. Also I pretty much don't have songs where I don't have the full album..."

I'd suggest you're in the minority of MP3 users on this one, Suresh. I don't know any other MP3philes who regularly listen to albums in their entirety, and the format does seem to encourage/foster an attitude by which music is generally regarded as more disposable, more transient and transitory. People's attention spans appear to be shortening, and many if not most listeners seem to treat MP3 players like libraries of songs rather than albums. It's the phenomenon of TV channel-hopping crossing over into music consumption, one finger always hovering over the skip button.

Of course, one question I have pondered is whether many modern musicians would actually expect their offerings to be treated with the respect afforded to them by the Real Record Club - or would they themselves be inclined to scoff at the concept of listening in silence from start to finish as overly po-faced? Would Chris Martin actually be offended, for instance, if he discovered you only ever listened to Coldplay's latest album in part and on headphones while busy working?

It also comes down to whether musicians still set out to record a coherent album or just throw together a random collection of songs. There's enough evidence to suggest the art of crafting and structuring an album is still very much alive (take my current obsession, PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, for instance) - but if an album is simply a hotch-potch of individual, discrete tracks, then it could be argued that piecemeal consumption is exactly what is required and expected, and that the Real Record Club's approach is completely ill-suited to such albums.

Anyway, back to Suresh...

"Further I would argue CDs are a dead medium. I actually think buying the LP is a good idea; then at least you have something cool and nice big artwork - for regular listening you could just steal the MP3 versions."

I must confess that I've never owned a record player (though I do have a handful of 7" singles) and, as someone who grew up as CDs were taking off, I have issues with vinyl snobbery of the sort espoused by Shepherd and by extension the Real Record Club. The negligible difference in sound quality (to the untrained ear, at least) is something we've mentioned above, but the other oft-cited reason for vinyl's superiority over alternative media is the artwork. OK so the size is important - but a CD booklet can display more overall than can the cardboard and inner sleeves of an LP, and the format still permits plenty of artistic and creative licence.

Love of vinyl is largely a form of musical materialism/fetishism - and when it comes to music (if nothing else) I'm an avowed materialist, just of the CD generation. Give me a physical object that can sit on a physical shelf rather than a digital file sat on a hard drive any day.

"Finally you don't have to go to a wankfest record club to appreciate full albums. Plugging your iTunes into some proper speakers/amps is all you need; not to be surrounded by some goddamn hipster music snobs..."

You're right there, Suresh - you don't. I think Shepherd's point, though, is that it can be difficult to carve out the time to dedicate to an album at home - having a fixed time slot and making listening a communal experience could be a great help to those who would otherwise struggle. Presumably there's also some discussion afterwards, like a book group, and attendees don't all melt away in silence when the last note fades.

As for the "goddamn hipster music snobs", it's true (as has been pointed out by a commenter on the Guardian article) that Shepherd could hardly have chosen two more self-consciously hipster albums to kick the club off with, Frank Zappa's Hot Rats and Lick My Decals Off, Baby by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band. It'll be interesting to see what's picked next - would it change your opinion if it happened to be an album you love or alternatively something chronically unhipster?