“Interstate Love Song” by Stone Temple Pilots
Phong: I love thinking about Napster in retrospect because I was completely unaware that I was in an era of digital upheaval. In some ways, I was a model participant: finding Napster, getting a CD burner, making custom labels off a stolen version of Photoshop. (You could argue that Stone Temple Pilots and A-ha are responsible for my design career.) I couldn’t tell you how I knew about this song, or where I first heard it, but it was the first thing I successfully downloaded off Napster. At my peak with my 56k modem, I would tie up family phone line every night, just to wake up to three songs and a virus. But it was so worth it.
Don’t ask how many techno remixes of classical music I had.
5songpjct: Ok. I won’t.
Could you explain what Napster was for any of my readers who are too young to know what that is.?
Phong: Napster was a beautiful little application. At its simplest, it was file-sharing over the internet. Where it was unique was that traditionally someone had to have the song placed somewhere dedicated on a computer. And everyone would navigate to that place to get the song. Then when you wanted it — Napster would pull parts of the song from everyone until you had all the pieces. Then as long as you left your computer on, people could get the same song from you. It got shut down real fast.
COMING UP, I think everyone had a crush on Susanna Hoffs