Between the ages of 18 and 45 I routinely envied friends, guys all, who lorded over elaborate music collections.
When they hosted beer-sodden parties, when they snuggled with dates, when they sat at kitchen tables just sipping coffee on a snowy Sunday morning, they enlivened the occasions with whatever floated their boats: Howlin’ Wolf’s first record, a Tom Tom Club cassette, a CD of some classic Edith Piaf.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say I had nothing. I had the radio. I had recorded odds and ends that somehow had followed me during many, many moves. For the most part, none of this prevented my boat from sinking.
I loved music. But I just didn’t have it together enough to corral a satisfying collection, something that would meet, if not enhance or even change, my moods.
But last year, I joined a streaming music site, called MOG, one of several similar services, like Spotify, making waves in the United States and around the world.
With its millions of songs, I thought MOG would give me a lifetime of seas; that I’d sign up, raise my sails and voyage from audio New World to New World — never bored or at a loss for tunes, forever delighted with my musical accompaniments.
Ah, the naivete — the gall! — of the dilettante sailor.
I forked over $10 a month to access MOG’s music catalog, which the company reports holds 12 million tracks, with more added every day. (I paid for my account because I wanted mobile access; MOG can be used for free on desktops.)
With no curatorial or treasure-hunting toil, and no expensive farrago of cords and speakers and heavy black electronic components, I bested all of my music-geek pals.
Instantly, I had it all.
The first thing I listened to was a reissue of the Rolling Stones masterpiece “Exile on Main Street,” which had just been released the day I discovered MOG.
I tapped the MOG app on my iPhone, while walking in downtown Denver. Found the brand-spanking-new recording. Listened. Smiled — smiled broadly.
I remember saying to myself: “This is the future of music.”
From there followed a blizzard of downloading.
When I felt sentimental about my youth, I could heighten the mood with the Talking Heads or the Pixies. If it was gloomy and cold outside, I might sink into the atmosphere with Bach, or Brian Eno or Alice Coltrane. Sour moods sometimes drifted away with a dose of Jamaican dub music.
When I told people that I could not believe it, I wasn’t using a figure of speech. I truly could not believe that I could listen to nearly anything ever recorded.
This wouldn’t amount to much if I just listened to familiar artists. But MOG doesn’t strand subscribers in the audio wilderness. It shepherds users to music they have never heard before.
Every day, the company posts a list of “Editors’ Picks,” albums that MOG employees champion — a 1970s California- country classic, a trendsetting work of electronica from the ’80s, a bebop treasure that emerged during World War II.
MOG employees, and other people with MOG accounts, also create playlists, mixes of songs that usually revolve around some theme, like great summer tunes, or classic new- wave hits, or rockabilly one-hit-wonders.
In addition, there is MOG’s radio service. The company offers changing lists of custom radio stations, based on the music of an artist (so you could have a Katy Perry radio station, with music just by Katy or a mix of tunes from the diva and other similar artists — the choice is yours). Not interested in the MOG- pushed radio stations? Select a track or artist from the library, and create your own.
This staggering bounty of music transformed the way I interact with songs.
I discovered old-time artists, like Buck Owens, and new ones, like Gang Gang Dance. I awakened to genres, like traditional forms of Chinese music, and that Jamaican dub. I rediscovered things: Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” and the majesty that is the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.”
Music captivated my world like a fever, accompanying me on bus rides and long runs and nights swinging in my backyard hammock and afternoons pulling weeds.
I thought things would just get better and better, that I would reach some sort of nirvana, a place where music and I forever would be in sync.
My boat, I thought, would always remain afloat.
But then, a few months ago, the fever broke. The ship began to list.
The feast had grown too rich, the portions too big, the courses — just too many.
On MOG, I found recordings of “nature sounds,” like rainstorms and crashing waves, and began listening to them instead of David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine and Wu Tang Clan.
And then came the dance with “ambient sound”: the soup of insect natterings, traffic noises, jet roars, voices and more that surround us.
That’s right, instead of organized sound — music — I actively listened to the noise of vehicle tires rolling along asphalt.
This was an unexpected turn.
I had become bored with it all: tired of the same beats, jaded by the hooks that I’d already heard a zillion times, blase about the singing that all seemed to fit into a handful of categories, yawning over nearly any new release — everything sounded extremely derivative.
For a while, I barely touched MOG.
It is creeping back into my life now, in smaller, fever-free doses. I still believe services like MOG represent music’s future, and I’m not ready to cancel my subscription.
The slackening of my embrace with MOG hasn’t weakened my love of music, however.
Instead of all MOG, all the time, I’m also listening to a lot of excellent radio deejays, available through smartphone apps.
It turns out I’m a poor captain. Too much responsibility! I want somebody else to navigate music’s sloshing seas. I just want to go along for the ride.
For my boat to float, services like MOG help, but it needs a human deejay with eclectic tastes — not a computer-generated autopilot, not a themed playlist.
What I need is the steady hands of the music-geek deejays, the ones I foolishly believed I had vanquished with a credit card and access to the world’s music.
Douglas Brown: 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
