Darren Blase

Rock 'n' roll is a single. It's one cut. It's a hook. A riff. A chorus. Above everything else on an album, it's the best part. The most fun. A three-minute slice of an artist's life.

"The single is the perfect format for rock 'n' roll," says Darren Blase, owner of Shake It Records in Northside. "It's supposed to be three minutes, not a 30-minute Grateful Dead jam. So many artists just had one good song in them, thankfully or not. It's just a great testament to that one great moment."

And there have been plenty of great moments. Unfortunately, it has gotten harder over the years to get your hands on them.

A huge memory of Blase's childhood was buying 45s. He still buys them when his record store gets great ones, but they last only about a day on the shelves.

"Everybody loves them," he says. "I hear it everyday, 'I just want one song ... Is there a single?' Nope. Sadly, most songs are not available in single, or you can't get them in print now."

The shelves of music stores were once lined with the three top minutes of pop. First came 45s. Then the cassette and CD singles. Today, though, unless you're interested primarily in top 40 or imports, CD singles are much harder to come by.

Brian Lucas, a spokesman for Best Buy, says the chain hopes that will change with the increasing popularity of the DVD singles.

"People like them because you can package more features, like video, artist interviews and liner notes," Lucas says. "They can hold so much information that the possibilities are greater in terms of all the things you can do with them."

Distribution of singles has dipped dramatically in the last five to 10 years, Lucas says. While 15 years ago consumers could get many different singles from different genres, and even from back catalogs, the CD singles market seemed to dry up. Now buyers are asking for them again.

"It's just the top of the charts available on single. It's a more limited reach than it once was, but you can still find a good audience for certain types," he says.

It's primarily Top 40 artists like Avril Lavigne and 50 Cent who deal primarily in radio singles.

That music fans will pay $6 for an import with only one or two songs is evidence to Blase that consumers like and miss the single format.

Three minutes of rock 'n' roll. Three minutes is all it takes.

Gina Daugherty