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IPod dilemma

Marcus Berkmann

Wednesday, 1st October 2008

A musician friend of mine acquired his first iPod recently, and like small boys who don’t realise that everyone else went through this about five years ago, he and I frequently discuss our battles with the things.

So, talking to my friend the musician again, I asked him how much being a fan of other people’s music (which he is, overwhelmingly) had contributed to his own music. Because it seems to me that only by being a fan can you appreciate other fans’ incredibly complex relationships with the music they love. You can go through so many phases with an album. I have written here before about Boo Hewerdine’s Harmonograph and Kirsty McGee’s Frost, from 2006 and 2004 respectively. The former is a mainly acoustic set of simply glorious pop songs he had originally written for other people, the latter glistening modern folk from a grievously underpromoted Manchester singer-songwriter. But it’s only now, a couple of years down the line, having listened to these albums with all my attention, put them on in the background and forgotten about them for a while, that with the help of the iPod I have to come to realise just how special they are, at least to me. My friend the musician understood completely, although he’d be more likely to run across Trafalgar Square dressed as a carrot than listen to either of them. He thinks that being a fan keeps him sane. It’s the enthusiasm that matters, not what it’s for.

Still, my other friend the garden designer may have found the way forward. She decided that there wasn’t enough room on her iPod, so she bought another one. A simple, practical solution, that will make Apple shareholders very happy indeed.