Putting It On Wax (Museum)

Over the course of my life, I have  purchased, with sincerity, three audio formats: vinyl records, cassettes, and CDs-- in fact, in 1989 I was so forward thinking that I bought the Cult album Sonic Temple in CD format before I even owned a CD player . . . I sensed the demise of the cassette format and I knew I was going to have to purchase a CD player, so in order to listen to this album, I had to visit other rooms on my freshman dorm and impress these stereo systems in the name of Ian Astbury (and it's a good thing I purchased the album on CD, because there were a few songs-- notably "Wake Up Time For Freedom"-- that were absolutely horrible and the CD format made it easy to skip over them) but, for whatever reason, I never bought any 8-Track cartridges, despite the fact that the gray two door 1985 Buick Skylark I drove during high school had a working 8 Track cassette player . . . instead I bought an 8 Track to compact cassette converter, in order to keep up with the times; I'm not sure what the point of this sentence is, other than I wish I was forward thinking enough to sell all my CDs before that format became defunct, and also how reflecting on these formats allows me to actually understand the hipster mentality of purchasing vinyl albums-- despite the irony and the environmental waste-- because it is nice to have an object associated with something as resonant and emotional and abstract as music . . . I don't think kids today have as much attachment to albums as those of us that grew up before the digital revolution, nor do I think kids wrap their identity so closely with bands and musical artists and this may have something to do with the fact that they haven't had to buy their music in a particular tangible format (or perhaps it's because of Snapchat and YouTube and Facebook, youngsters-- and perhaps all of us-- have become more image based, as opposed to auditory).