Roger Friedman makes an odd forecast:

The general disarray at Sony Music’s Columbia Records may have a savior: Bruce Springsteen.

The Boss, as we still call him, is apparently planning a new album for release in late fall. Some sources insist that this will be an E Street Band album, and not another side project like the “Seeger Sessions” or a solo collection of introspective songs.

Well, whatever excitement might be generated by a new Bruce/E Street Band album, it’s hardly likely to help the decaying bottom line for Columbia or any other music label. (They did just have a big worldwide number one album out last August. What was that one called again?)

Later in the article, Friedman alludes to being told as much by a bigwig at Sony:

When I mentioned this to a Sony higher-up the other day, the person replied: “You are the last one writing about the record business. Don’t you realize it’s over?”

Maybe, but if so, what do I do with my 1,200 45s and thousands of CDs? Not everything fits in a computer. And when the Springsteen album comes out, I don’t want to listen to it on earbuds, but through my Rogue tube amplifier and Sequerra Met 7 speakers. Loud, baby, loud.

“Not everything fits in a computer”? That’s a rather Pleistocene-ish remark to make in 2007, with the kinds of hard drives, portable and otherwise, that are out there. I’m sorry to tell Roger that, yes, it’s official: everything does fit in a computer. I’m sure he could have an intern digitize all those 45s and he could have them on his iPod in no time at all. But, he’s surely correct in thinking that something would be lost. Compressed music of the sort that people listen to on iPods is missing a subtantial amount of fidelity in any case, just factually speaking, whether the listener is consciously perceiving it or not. It’s certainly remarkable that the latest advance in music reproduction is in that sense a step backward — although it is doubtless a temporary one. I suppose you could compare it to the era of the cassette tape. Mind you, when I was 15 or 16, the crummiest cassette tape recording of music I loved was worth more to me than anything else I could imagine, so I suppose fidelity can be over-rated.

But there are those other reasons to go easy on the iPod:

A 37-year-old jogger was caught in a thunderstorm in a Burnaby park in June 2005. Taking cover under a tree, he was hit by lightning as he stood listening to music from his iPod.

The electrical current travelled through his headphones, throwing him two metres, rupturing his eardrums, breaking his jaw and leaving him with chest and neck burns, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The lightning burned his chest, neck and face, with the burns tracing the position of the earphones. The man has lost half of his hearing and can’t hear high-frequency sounds, even with hearing aids.

So, don’t forget to turn off Thunder on the Mountain when there’s thunder on the mountain.

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