How do you listen?

It's funny this photo came across my screen today as I'm thinking about streaming services.

Shopping for the right one for me, actually.

I'm doing the free trial of Apple.

My 14 year old son thinks Spotify is awesome.

We call out "Alexa, play... whatever is on our mind" when we want to fill the silence at home. Sometimes Amazon. Sometimes Pandora.

This is not the way we used to do it. We used to load up 5 discs in the changer and set it on shuffle. Or put a mix tape in the deck. Or pull out individual albums from individual artists to play all the way through. The perfect album side. Or sometimes just the favorite radio station with the perfect host. Scotso. John DeBella. Carol Miller getting the Led out at 10pm. We were sure we knew what she looked like even though none of us had ever seen her. We just knew her incredibly welcoming voice.

After several moves and several garage sales, the physical record collection isn't what it used to be.

Which makes me sad sometimes.

But the list of what I wanted to listen to was always a ton larger and wider and more varied than I'd ever be able to collect. Even as I required the ritual of unsheathing my copy of Physical Grafitti or Blonde on Blonde or Bitches Brew or Big Pink and placing it ever so carefully on the turntable.

Exile on Main St. or Sticky Fingers? VH 1 or 2? Dark Side? Side 2 first? Heavy Weather or In the Court of the Crimson King?

It was as much about that ritual as it was about the listening experience. Maybe more.

It's why they still press vinyl.

It's why that audiophile you know is so insufferable.

With the stacked system right out of 1984. The long diatribes about large speakers and how digital compresses the sound.

But he's right. At least about some of it.

Vinyl gave way to magnetic tape gave way to digital coasters.

Radio was a way of hearing new things you hadn't heard before.

Needing to wait sometimes hours for the DJ to come back and play it again so you could catch the title or the band.

Visiting the record store was the same as visiting the library. Oddly quiet between the ears despite whatever they were spinning in Jack's at that moment. Maybe you were actively listening, maybe you weren't. Either way, you were flipping through the album covers taking in all that original art and photography as you did.

Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. Bat Out of Hell. London Calling. That poster of Johnny Cash flipping you the bird on the wall.

You couldn't wait to get home and peel the shrink wrap off to get at the liner notes.

One time when I was living in Red Bank, I was wandering through with a friend who pointed across the bins lining the long, narrow room.

"Is that...?"

"Yep."

Bruce was walking around with one of the clerks gathering a tall stack of discs. All folk. Mostly Seeger. Months later, we discovered why.

And now, we're reduced to streaming.

It's not the same experience.

At all.

The sense of wonder. Discovery. Aimless joy. Is gone.

The photo reminded me of what if felt like to wander the bins in the record store. The first album I ever purchased for myself. Pieces of Eight. Styx. And a lifetime connection to the concept album. Drama and drum lines. 

But there's still good music to be found between the rising and falling arcs of auto tune.

Sometimes harder to find. Recommended by the concert-goers in your tribe. The small venues, not the arenas.

The opening acts.

If you didn't laugh, you'd cry.

The singer-songwriters.

The artistic lyricists.

And that's what brings me back here.

What tool? What streaming service? Which one is going to serve me best?

What do you use?

"Suggest me bands like the one I asked for?" Never seems to fit, really.

Or just pay for premium and listen to everything by Jason Isbell from the beginning?

Or should I just start collecting albums again? A daunting, but exciting thought to consider.

How do you do it?