Not being able to stop mid-song (OR ALBUM! if you're truly mental)

[alan nagsworth]

Can't be just me, right? 99% of occasions where I need to manually stop whatever music's playing, I have to wait for the end of the song. That jarring snap to silence in the middle of a piece of art, it's fucking unbearable. Imagine looking at a painting except for some reason you're the sort of person who with all the strength of your senses will look at it gradually from top to bottom as a means of examining it. Except you get halfway down it and suddenly your dad's like "Right off we go then, down the shop, come on you little prick" and turns the light off and pulls you immediately and swiftly out of the room. No one should ever have to experience that if it can be helped. Not least of all by their dad.

Of course this can cause complications. If the song ends abruptly then it's a merciful release, but if it's a slow fade out you've got to stand there with my finger hovering over the fucking button waiting for a silence as absolute as possible. That's the sort of thing where people start thinking you're obviously a bit of a weird cunt. Also what if the song just started but then your mate who you've been waiting for for fucking ages is suddenly ready to go down the pub? Sometimes I have to force myself to lower the volume to silence, like a fake fade-out. It physically hurts me, in my gut. I'm not even kidding. I hate it.

The other day doing the fortnightly big shop in Sainsbury's I made the mistake of listening to Swans' "To Be Kind". It was all well and good right until I was finishing up, and I found myself approaching the queue. I'd forgot to take a quid for the trolley so there I was, overflowing basket in one hand, and in the other hand a 7kg bag of dry cat food and a box of 40 pouches of wet cat food, and the crescendo of "Bring the Sun / Toussaint l'ouverture" absolutely thundering into my ears. That song is 34 minutes long and it's like a fucking religious cleansing experience, there's no bastard way I'm ever turning it off until it's completely done. Stood there with those awkward shaped and heavy objects in both arms, sweating, foolishly dehydrated with that cacophony blaring white-hot directly into my skull, I did momentarily feel as though I might faint. Was worth it though, that song's fucking boss.

[momatt]

Yeah, I don't like doing that either.

[the]

You can get around this if you just hit the stop button, then sing 'You know it is, it real-ly is. Thankyou!'.

[Egyptian Feast]

I hate interrupting a song halfway through even if it's lengthy, so listening to music in the office was always a nightmare. Nobody would bother me for hours then, 2 minutes after I stuck my earphones in, every cunt in the building would want to speak to me. I mostly wouldn't bother listening to music at work because of this, but sometimes you have a tune in your head you just have to hear from start to finish NOW. This seems to be the optimal time to approach my desk for some people. Joke's on them now, I can listen to a 30+ minute Fela Kuti or Swans track completely uninterrupted. Unless my boss calls.

[Dewt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkHLLgqFyKU

[SteveDave]

If a song from "Imperial Bedroom" comes on my iPod in shuffle, I have to listen to the whole LP.

[QDRPHNC]

Friend of mine says he's come up with a bass loop for his new track that is so good, that when he tried turning it off... he literally couldn't... he actually physically couldn't do it.