Discovering the iPod a decade late

Thumbs Up

To ring in 2011, I spent the afternoon of New Year's Eve doing something most people were doing in 2001: I bought my first iPod.

Yes, I love music and yes, I'm a musician, but I'm also a technophobic moron who is habitually slow to embrace most new technology.

The adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" has long worked just fine for me, and being behind everyone else in my old-fashioned methods of enjoying music (CD's, even cassettes and records, on occasion) didn't bother me one bit.

Now many of these same friends are laughing at my newfound excitement over this decade-old invention.

After rushing home to immediately download my basic musical necessities (KISS, Sex Pistols, Merle Haggard), I was delighted to find so many obscure favorites available at my fingertips and most for only $1. (Anyone remember Sigue Sigue Sputnik? Aldo Nova? How about Charlie Sexton's "Beat's So Lonely?")

Reading all the Best Albums of 2010 columns in last week's Charleston Scene, I further realized just how ridiculously out of touch I am with contemporary music, and hopelessly stuck in the '70s, '80s and '90s. So I proceeded to download some New York Dolls, W.A.S.P. and Buffalo Tom for good measure.

By the time you read this column, I will be in Washington, D.C., after traveling nearly eight hours by car, all of which will have been spent enjoying my new favorite toy.

Everyone knows that iPods have revolutionized the music business, but this wonderful little contraption has just revolutionized, or at least made more enjoyable, my day-to-day business.

Better late than never.

Thumbs Down

With my mind racing with excitement over all the music possibilities, I was surprised by some of the songs not available on iTunes.

Until recently, The Beatles catalogue wasn't available on iTunes and Australian rockers AC/DC still don't offer their music through the service.

But it is some of the lesser-known acts that are most peculiar about what they offer, or at least the record companies.

For example, '80s metal/punk singer Wendy O. Williams' biggest hit was "It's My Life," written by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS. Yet, Williams' most popular song is not available while some of her more obscure material is.

On a local note: Williams was once arrested by the North Charleston police in the late '80s for indecent exposure during her concert at the long-gone "Derriere's" nightclub on Rivers Ave.

The same missing music goes for the one-hit-wonder German metal act Accept, whose single hit, the title of which cannot be printed here, isn't available either.

My favorite song by the legendary rap group Public Enemy is "My Uzi Weighs a Ton" from 1987's "Yo! Bum Rush the Show," but you can't buy this song on iTunes.

There are other MP3 services that offer these songs and others that iTunes has neglected, but it is quite odd that so many tunes are not offered, and in such a random manner.