The Previous Unavailability of Music.

The other day I heard Mahler's "Te Deum" on the radio and was incredibly absorbed by it, and that brought me back to a handful of other times in my life that I'd heard something on the radio in the car, and actually lingered in a parking lot to hear a song through to the end...

With classical, Percy Grainger's "Warriors" and Cesar Franck's Symphony in D, and with pop, Brian Wilson's "Heroes and Villains", in the original arrangement before he had his Smile-associated breakdown.

Because music is so easily available online, moments like those don't really happen anymore, where you make yourself listen to something b/c you're not sure when you'll be able to hear it again.

I remember that even through the early 2000s, Smile was this legendary thing that was on bootlegs and passed around, it wasn't like you could just go out and find it somewhere.

That difficulty of access really made stuff worth more, somehow.

I also find it interesting that Brian Wilson's music lined up with classical music, in its overwhelmingness.

I think that says something about his orchestrations or musical complexity or something.