One year for Christmas, my mother bought me a copy of the album Why Can’t We Be Friends by War. This album has two hits, the title track and Low Rider. While I love these songs, this is an album that I would have never bought for myself. It had probably been out for a couple of years before I received it. That didn’t stop me from listening to it and it became a favorite. One of the highlights of the album was the first song on side 2. It’s an instrumental song that lasts for over seven minutes called Smile Happy. This song has become one of my go-to chill-out songs. It doesn’t put me to sleep but it has a calming effect on me to help me relax at the end of the day.
Over the years, Smile Happy has been one of the songs that I listen to a lot. It was an early add to my instrumental music play list on my iPod. When we started getting Amazon Echo devices in our home, we started using the Amazon Music service that comes with Prime to listen to music. This version of their music service doesn’t have the variety in their Amazon Music Unlimited plan which we eventually started using. When we were using the regular plan, I found for artists like Frank Zappa, they had a few of his most popular albums but the Unlimited plan gave you practically all his music. Part of my decision to go with the Unlimited plan was because the album Why Can’t We Be Friends was available only with the advanced plan. I would regularly listen to this album just to hear Smile Happy.
Then one day, asked Alexa to play it and she replied that it wasn’t available. I could only get her to play the hit songs from this album but not the whole thing. They had removed one of my favorite albums. It’s back on the service now but as with any streaming service for music or video, items that you count on being available can disappear at any moment. Similarly, Steve Martin’s A Wild and Crazy Guy album isn’t currently streaming on Amazon Music Unlimited, but all his other comedy albums are. None of his comedy albums show up in a search on the free version of the Spotify app. All of this to say, if there is music that you really love, I suggest purchasing it, with physical media probably being the most reliable format. Digital copies are probably ok if you can make reliable backups.
