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You Can't Hear it on the Radio is a blog about the current golden age of music. At no time since the 1960s has there been such an output of quality music by so many varied artists. Add to that technology that makes it easier than ever for the curious to find good music today. But, like an unlimited selection at an all-you-can-eat buffet, there's no table service. You will have to seek it out. The old model is dead. Generally speaking, you can't hear it on the radio. You can learn about it here, though.

Most of us listen primarily to recorded music - albums and songs on record, compact disc or iPod. It's largely a controlled environment, with only live albums betraying the slightest possibility of a flaw in performance - and even some of those are heavily augmented. Artists rightly want to put their best foot forward, giving fans, the general public and critics the best possible version of their work.

As I listen to music, I tend to follow three different paths:

1. Listen, get hooked and add the album to my regular rotation (this can include obsessive-compulsive listening)
2. Listen, find something interesting and plan to come back and re-listen, eventually moving on to option 1 or 3.
3. Listen, get left cold and move on to new and better possibilities

In relative terms, very few albums hit the first path, a large number hit the second, and very few hit the third. Finding nothing interesting in an album is a fairly rare occurrence - being musically curious means finding something interesting in most things.

But when an artist hits that sweet spot of path number one, I really spend time with their album, listening repeatedly, absorbing it and giving it a special place in my heart. Usually, only a few albums each year hit that sweet spot. While my "best of the year" list may include 30 albums, I only really love a select few.

Typically, those select few albums are by artists I have a long-term relationship with or by an artist new to me. It's rare that an artist I've previously been unimpressed by blows me away on a later release. For those artists in the sweet spot, I do my best to see them in concert.

It's in a live setting that the album can come truly alive. When an album comes alive in concert, it REALLY comes alive. New texture and depth is added, new meaning is found and the album suddenly lives and breathes. Listening to it post-concert, I find myself appreciating the music more, giving it new attention and finding new parts to love.

On the other hand, in a live setting the music can remain inert - the product of a controlled environment. Most of the responsibility for that lies with the artist, who chooses to present it lifelessly, with no attempt to draw the audience into the music or do anything but reproduce the album as recorded. When that happens, it's hard to fight the feeling that it would have been easier to save money and time and just listen to the album again.

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