The Record Store Ain’t There Anymore
“Our current world is a place where algorithms help us find an approximation of what we think we want. But the best albums deliver something you never knew you wanted.” — Steven Hyden
If you have any love in your heart for rock ’n’ roll, even just a teeny tiny bit, you really owe it to yourself to read Twilight of the Gods. You will not regret it.
Steven Hyden is the closest thing the 21st Century has to Lester Bangs. (NOTE: I hope I need not have read much Bangs to believe this to be true, y’know, in my heart. Because the only true currency in this bankrupt worl– oh nevermind.)
Hyden is gifted with that nigh-singular passionate focus borne in youth and centered on music. While I was busy giving my tween and teen heart to everything all willy-nilly — movies, TV shows, music, comic books, novels, poetry, video games and role-playing games — he was just all-in on music. I was a pop culture slut; Steven Hyden arranged his marriage to music as a teen and never looked back.
Whereas Rob Sheffield (“Love is a Mixtape”) got my attention because he had a really powerful love story wrapped up in a love of music, Hyden earned it because his love story is the music. He loves the music I’ve long loved, but he takes it to nicer restaurants and cooler date spots, treats it better in bed at night, cuddles with it as the sun breaks through the blinds, and fixes it breakfast while it’s still in bed sleeping. I’m the POS guy who thought it might be romantic to share a box of 20 McNuggets while watching “The Land Before Time” on VHS.
Hyden knows his backyard. It’s like he knows every blade of grass on the lawn of rock ’n’ roll, and I’m just proud to know it’s a Bermuda Fescue mix. (But, because I love movies as much as I do, I at least know you mow that lawn with a big Yard King 410, because it doesn’t have the plastic flywheel.)
My pre-order of his newest book was waiting for me on my Kindle the Tuesday it was released, and I was finished by Sunday. Which for me is fast. The book is everything I knew it would be but far better. When he’s debating the merits of playlists and albums, I felt genuine guilt for having allowed so much of my modern music fandom revolve around playlists.
Since starting the book, I’ve listened to Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, NIN’s The Fragile, Against Me!’s New Wave, Japandroids’ second album, and even Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon all the way through. He’s only the second person to ever convince me to give an album’s worth of time to Pink Floyd, and the first was a girl who invited me to listen to The Wall with her in college.
There’s so much music out there that sometimes it’s easy to get lost, be lazy, and let Spotify pick things for you, but Hyden’s book gave me the added motivation to refocus my attention on the very past this blog was intended to be about in the first place.
His book has inspired me to begin the important process of reclaiming the discipline — so difficult to maintain as a harried parent and husband — of dedicating undivided attention to an album from start to finish. I’m not there yet. I’m working on getting through four and five songs without distraction, focused either on the lyrics or on not falling asleep (most of this must happen in earphones after the house is fully asleep).
READ: BOOK EXCERPT AT UPROXX
YEAR: 2007
