“The Believer” Music Issue: Celebrating Information Underload

Michaelangelo Matos | July 16, 2008 10:30 am
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One of the best pieces in The Believer‘s 2008 Music Issue is Douglas Wolk’s short detailing of his repeated encounters with a phantom. Well, not a phantom–a CD track listing that he put onto iTunes a while back for a 30-song Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns compilation that he’s never seen another copy of. Apparently, no one else has either: Wolk finds the track listing popping up over and over, always with the same typo (Wolk’s) on one of the titles. Which makes us wonder: has this ever happened to you? Not so much the CD (though given the seemingly evanescent nature of titles produced early on for compact disc only to never be seen again, that certainly counts) as finding your own handiwork reappearing in front of you in a different guise. (No “that famous person stole my song I sent him a copy of seeking advice when I was a naive teenager” stories, please.) [The Believer]