Back in my childhood I wished for two things only. One day I hoped to live in a moated castle like all the top rock stars of the day. I also longed to own a jukebox. I'm still a few million quid short of buying the castle but I've finally got the jukebox. This push-button music device of my dreams is not the highly decorative Wurlitzer I prayed I'd some day possess. To my astonishment, it turns out to be an iTunes library containing close to 30,000 songs which transmit either through my computer or via my widescreen TV.
The reason for my astonishment is that, until fairly recently, the chances of my joining the digital revolution were absurdly remote. It wasn't the sound quality of mp3 files I had a problem with. After all, only Bang & Olufsen bores and, more credibly, members of the bat kingdom are to able to tell the difference between analogue and digital. Instead, my resistance was all down to my romantic attachment to the idea that music is at its most complete when accompanied by engaging graphical material. Being a sucker for a good album sleeve, I had no truck with the way that downloading was squeezing the art out of music.
My stance began to tenderise with the advent of iTunes7, making it possible to mass-download album artwork for most of my new iTunes library. It yielded further with the discovery that gaps could be filled with the help of free software such as Corripio. But it has taken Google's image search utility to completely convert me to the digital cause.
Now, even the most obscure album artwork can be unearthed and saved in my music library. Better still, I'm now able to play God with my collection of songs and choose the perfect image to chaperone music I consider to have been cruelly ill-served by graphic designers. Finally I can revitalise those blues, soul and country compilations with their 24-hour petrol station covers; all the great hip-hop music that has been demeaned by unsightly junior high artwork; all those classic Tamla albums serving reminding that Motown's quality control did not always extend to the art department.
Best of all, I can at last furnish some of my favourite albums (the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, the Go-Betweens' 16 Lovers Lane, The Teardrop Explodes' Kilimanjaro, almost everything by Van Morrison, everything by Smokey Robinson) with images more resonant to me than the original botched artwork.
Consequently, my Luddite days are now firmly behind me and much time is gainfully spent converting others to the digital cause. A couple of minutes spent gazing at my album cover screensaver usually does the trick. Forget the Chichen Itza pyramid and the Statue of Christ Redeemer, my ever-changing mosaic of 30,000 sublime images is truly one of the great wonders of the world. Especially now I've replaced the picture of Brian Wilson feeding a goat with one of my dog, Banjo, being chased around the garden by a cat.
Vive la révolution!
