Pythoneering

Had a need to download and install html5lib the other day, and was most amused to find a module called ihatexml.py lurking there in the source code!…

The release of a new album by a favourite band or artist seemed much more of a special event back in the days before CDs and music downloads. 12-inch vinyl was the medium, so the album sleeve was a decent size, with bigger and more comprehensive artwork than we’ve been accustomed to seeing since CDs took over from vinyl. I used to love pouring over every detail of a new album’s sleeve while I listened to it for the first time. Gatefold sleeves were the best, giving you four surfaces that could be covered with artwork, photographs, song lyrics and obscure details about the instruments used by the band members…

CDs pretty much killed all of that for me. Sure, you could shrink everything down to jewel case proportions - even make the CD insert into a booklet containing more words and pictures than would be found on the typical gatefold sleeve. But somehow, it just wasn’t the same. The fact that a magnifying glass was often needed to read everything might have had something to do with it.

Now, in the brave new world of music downloads, things are even worse in this regard. A PDF of the booklet that would have come with the physical CD is just not as satisfying as having the actual booklet in your hands, which in turn is not as satisfying as opening up the gatefold sleeve of a 12-inch vinyl LP.

As we move into a digital future, we’ve all but lost the tactile element of being a music consumer. CDs may have been more convenient than vinyl and may have sounded better (without high-end equipment, at least), but there was something special about the look, feel and even the smell of a vinyl album and its packaging that CDs just couldn’t duplicate. And now, with downloads, there’s nothing there at all!

Fortunately, some of my favourite musicians are trying their best to buck the trend. I recently purchased a beautifully-packaged release of Steven Wilson’s solo album Insurgentes, in the form of an 11×11-inch cloth-bound book containing 2 CDs, 1 DVD and 120 pages of colour photographs - brilliant stuff! Marillion’s recent Happiness Is The Road was also made available to fans as a special release - a slip case containing two hardback books, each with a disc and a collection of impressive artwork.

Although this special packaging is expensive - Happiness Is The Road cost me three times as much as a digital download - I, for one, think it is worth it.