The Potency Of Cheap Music

It is fifty years since I got my first record player.

It was a Dansette and my Mother got both it
and the Tommy Steele single 'Little White Bull'
as my first record to play. Both came from the junk shop
where she minded the store, and worked cash in hand
cleaning ovens and other white goods, for resale
whilst the owner of the shop was filling his van
with the goods from his latest house clearance. 

Popular music back then was relatively simple;
what the BBC played was what was popular
and nobody saw the irony in selling 'rebellion',
where a truer rebel would say they were not for sale.

I spent my 30 pence pocket each week on singles
that for having left the charts were no longer played
on pub jukeboxes. I paid the price of what it would
have cost to play on the jukebox to buy the single.

I accumulated quite a lot of music that way.

Nowadays the recording industry is a different beast,
and the premium is on music played live, the music CD
is a loss-leader to the point of becoming nearly worthless
soon after being issued. CDs would become landfill
were but for charity shops getting what they can for them.

So from 20 pence a single fifty years ago, 
it is now 50 pence a CD, for a whole album,
as found now in your local charity emporium.

Once bought it will remain in your house
as long as you let it stay. There, it's currency
is no longer money, but the length of time
spent listening to the CD, all the better
to appreciate the artistry of the performer.   

Ear worms have never been so cheap, or as potent.