No music should ever be background music

It occurred to me the other day--and I was haunted by this--that rock music could easily become someone's background music, the way people use classical or jazz as background music. No music should ever be background music, as no art should be selected simply for its mere coordination with the color of a couch.

It is so easy to get an album these days--download one from itunes--that the experience of absorption, of sitting down with a new record, or tape, or CD, for hours, reading the lyrics, looking at the artwork, that that experience is gone. It's wrong that that experience is gone, or is on the wane.