Dylan Jones, iPod, Therefore I Am (Bloomsbury Books, 2005)
Hoagy Carmichael said that. Hoagy Carmichael, friend of Bix Beiderbecke, and composer of such classics as "Georgia On My Mind" and "Stardust." I think most of the writers here at Green Man Review would agree with old Hoagy. And I know that Dylan Jones (editor in chief of British GQ and author of iPod, Therefore I Am) agrees, since he uses Mr. Carmichael's quote to begin his book. And what a book it is!
I'm not normally drawn to books about technology, even though in my daytime job I am responsible for much of the new technology that is used at a major Canadian University. But every once in a while a new book comes out which talks about technology in the way we think about it: as a tool which is way more fun to use than the last tool we had! Dylan Jones thinks that the iPod is the greatest thing to come along since . . . well, he thinks it is so great that there really isn't anything to compare with it! And he spends 207 pages telling us why!
The book alternates between a history of the development of the iPod -- its origin, design and mandate -- and the story of how one man (Mr. Jones) decided just which 4,000 songs would form the soundtrack to his life! It's a fascinating look at the obsessions of the music fan, and you might learn a few things about the business world too.
The development of the iPod was rapid and grew from the desire of Steve Jobs (the CEO of Apple Computers) to produce the best music management system ever. Dylan Jones thinks Jobs and his crew did just that! He spends some time detailing the career of Apple Designer Jonathan Ive, who is responsible for the look and feel of Apple products. He's the guy who says they should be white, and fit neatly in your hand, and operate smoothly and intuitively. He sounds like a genius: eccentric, but brilliant. Jones talks about the ups and downs of the fortunes of Apple. Their successes and their failures are all outlined. And he describes the passion this company has for technology. He documents the important fact that Apple people understand music people. Jobs is quoted, "we said these [music subscriptions] services that are out now are going to fail. MusicNet's gonna fail, Pressplay's gonna fail. Here's why: people don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They bought 45s, then they bought LPs, then they bought cassettes, then they bought 8-tracks, then they bought CDs. They're going to want to buy downloads. People want to own their music. You don't want to rent your music -- and then, one day, if you stop paying, all your music goes away."
Exactly! We were just talking about this in the office. People who grew up with records miss those lovely 12" albums, with the heavy cardboard gatefold sleeves, with the pocket full of posters, lyric sheets, and badges. CD packaging reduced all this stuff to a smaller scale, but with a handy magnifying glass you could still get all the information you needed. Jobs and Ive have found a way to store album covers on the iPod! Did you realize that!?! I have got to get myself one of these things!
Jones alternates chapters: first history, then his story. He bought himself the big one, the 40GB iPod, and proceeded to load it with the music of his life. How he decided which song was unecessary, which LP had to be there in its entirety, which guilty pleasures were worthy of inclusion and which were not, makes for fascinating reading. The guy is as obsessive as I am. His experience with his wife ("You have too many records. . . .") mirrors my own. His collection of music includes many of the things that I have struggled to find over the years, "I begin poring over my Steely Dan playlist (which contains everything they'd ever released, including "Dallas" and "Sail the Waterway" from a mid-seventies EP, as well as a bootleg copy of "The Second Arrangement," the great lost song from Gaucho. . . ." [I bought that EP! At a premium price, an import, while I was on vacation, because I couldn't find it at home!] He also details his shopping habits:
In my wallet I carry a piece of photocopy paper folded in eight. It contains a list of records and CDs I'm looking for, and usually has at least a hundred things on it. I've been keeping the list for about fifteen years, adding and deleting as I work my way through it. Some things I buy if I find them and they're cheap enough, some I just look at in record shops knowing they'll still be there when I really want them, and some things I know I'll never find.
Yeah, that's just like the one in my wallet. And yeah, it's not simply finding the item . . . it has to be the right price!
The two stories blend. They become one as Jones gets close to the end of the loading process, and then discovers a way to get better quality, and considers starting over, from scratch. This is his odyssey. The iPod is the Trojan horse: a gift left outside the gates, filled with surprises. iPod, Therefore I Am makes for fast and entertaining reading. Passages will cause you to laugh out loud, to reconsider your own obsessions, to desire an iPod of your own. That was the biggest problem with the book. It's going to cost me! I just know it! Maybe if I sold some of those CDs I never listen to, I could raise the money to buy an iPod. But then I wouldn't be able to capture the own or two good songs from those CDs. Maybe, if I start right now, filling the hard-drive of my computer I can get a jump on things. As the other Dylan said, "Something is happening here. . . ." but this Mr. Jones knows precisely what it is!
