I Just Read About That…

Screwned. That’s the word I’ve come up with for something that people growing up now will never experience. This thought came about while listening to the Higher Learning soundtrack. As I may have noted, I am in the process of listening to all of my CDs, at lunch time, and I have made it into the Soundtracks section. So, today I listened to Higher Learning, an album I bought pretty much exclusively for the Tori Amos tracks. [Back in the early 90s I was a HUGE Tori Amos fan. Somehow she filled a niche that desperately needed filling, and I was smitten with her music and lyrics. (Although I always knew she was looney tunes, I was willing to put up with it because her work was so solid). In fact, I still think that her first, I guess, five albums are, overall, great. However, she has really started producing diminishing returns, with her previous two records being surprisingly dull. This is a woman with a great gift for melody and yet those last two were meandering at best. Her most recent one American Girl Posse is easily the best thing she’s released in a decade, even if the concept behind it is pretty silly. However, I won’t hold that against her. So, where was I? Oh right, so I used to be this die hard fan, buying anything with her name on it. And then Higher Learning came out with not one but TWO new Tori tracks (and it must be said, a couple of other interesting cuts too) . But largely, this is an album that I hated. It is full of R&B and some rather uninspired rapping (I do like the rap music, especially Public Enemy and Ice-T, but really beyond that, rap is a little too samey for me). Anyhow, this is how I got screwned. Buy buying a CD for a song or two and getting screwned because the rest of the tunes suck.

I think, realistically, this isn’t the best definition of screwned because I did choose the record knowing more or less what I was getting. A real definition of screwned is buying a record because you heard a great single, and then finding out that it’s either the only good song on the record, or, that rest of the album sounds nothing like the single. A striking example of this would be the Smashmouth album with “Walking on the Sun” on it. I didn’t actually buy this record, but I thought “Walking on the Sun” was a pretty weird single and listened to the rest of the album at a store, and I was shocked at how the rest of the album sounded nothing like the single! I avoided getting screwned! Hurrah!

But anyhow, what I’m getting at is that with that little iPod and downloading thing going on, kids are no longer going to get screwned, and while this is, by and large a good thing, overall, misery loves company, and they’ll never be able to say, “Crap, I just bought the latest so and so record and there’s only one good song on it,” and then go smoke a joint in their parents’ basement or something.