The music you'll never hear again

[Jorge]

For years in the late ‘90s the song that held a spot like this for me was “Stars” by Hum. I’d hear it on the radio once…every few months? Or maybe once a year? And for a number of years I didn’t know the name of the band, because it would be one of those songs played late at night with no intro by a DJ and then it’d cut straight to an ad. This was back when I would listen to WBCN every afternoon and hover over the “record” button before every new song played so I could immortalize it to cassette, but this song only came on at weird hours and I was never prepped to get it on tape. Then Napster came along but I probably hadn’t heard it in a few months so it didn’t occur to me to download it and then I faded away from radio and didn’t think about that song for years. I don’t remember exactly when it drifted back into my consciousness but it was probably around the time I started torrenting music, so the ‘05-‘06 range, and I probably downloaded and listened to the whole album for the first time, and it sat on a hard drive for a few more years and completely lost its aura. Maybe one or two of the other songs stood out to me. I got into records and bought a limited edition colored vinyl copy of the album in 2013 and I more than likely listened to it a few times when it arrived. But it’s been close to 13 years since then and I don’t think it’s come out of the jacket. This thread will probably the reason I give it a spin after all these years.

If you're planning on listening to it again you posted that story in the wrong thread

[Simple Torture]

For years in the late ‘90s the song that held a spot like this for me was “Stars” by Hum. I’d hear it on the radio once…every few months? Or maybe once a year? And for a number of years I didn’t know the name of the band, because it would be one of those songs played late at night with no intro by a DJ and then it’d cut straight to an ad. This was back when I would listen to WBCN every afternoon and hover over the “record” button before every new song played so I could immortalize it to cassette, but this song only came on at weird hours and I was never prepped to get it on tape. Then Napster came along but I probably hadn’t heard it in a few months so it didn’t occur to me to download it and then I faded away from radio and didn’t think about that song for years. I don’t remember exactly when it drifted back into my consciousness but it was probably around the time I started torrenting music, so the ‘05-‘06 range, and I probably downloaded and listened to the whole album for the first time, and it sat on a hard drive for a few more years and completely lost its aura. Maybe one or two of the other songs stood out to me. I got into records and bought a limited edition colored vinyl copy of the album in 2013 and I more than likely listened to it a few times when it arrived. But it’s been close to 13 years since then and I don’t think it’s come out of the jacket. This thread will probably the reason I give it a spin after all these years.

If you're planning on listening to it again you posted that story in the wrong thread

Who knows what will happen on the way to the basement.

[washing machine]

When I started this thread, I wasn't thinking about the impact that disappearing music journalism is having on lost music.

What’s also concerning to me is the dwindling opportunities to document music history. Decades ago, we had print magazines and newspapers committing some version of music history in physical form. Today, fragile internet sites mean there’s a big chunk of music history that’s vaporizing. People are already writing about the disappearing hip-hop blogs or the music lost when MySpace went under. Physical media might be scarce, but a digital file can disappear into the digital ether.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-140855844