The Age of Info Overload

This a.m., I came across the following quote on the net written upon the occasion of the release of the wonderful new CD Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin:

"If Brian Wilson had a laptop with internet access in 1950, whenever would he devote as much attention to learning the Four Freshman? Or would he just put them in his 100gig music folder next to the porn? "

Which, in turn, reminded me of something that my good buddy Ted Naron wrote on his blog a while back under the heading of Music is Over:

"Peggy Lee was born Norma Delores Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota. I’m trying to imagine a young Norma Delores Egstrom growing up on those lonely plains today. Instead of thrilling to the sounds of the big bands coming in over the radio, knowing she’s listening to the same broadcast that people are hearing coast to coast, knowing this connects her to that larger world, one which she is determined to be part of some day, she is in her room downloading tunes. And she stays there."

As for Brian Wilson's much ballyhooed new CD, whatever else one might think of "Reimagines," it is inarguable that the work is one of the most sumptuously produced albums of recent memory. If there were an afterlife, there's little doubt that "George and his lovely wife Ira" would be looking down (up?, up & down?) and smiling in full approval of what Brian hath wrought. But, of course, there is no heaven. . .no hell, for as one hebraphrenic in the movie The Caretakers so sagely observes. . ."There is only desert." Or at best, as one "expert" explains on SCTV, the afterlife is "Like a big cocktail party [with a "great" big band] that lasts for six to eight weeks." And then. . .that's it!