A World Purely Musical

...it is interesting to see how the ear trumps the eye when the computer takes over. Music is being consumed with no images attached—no videos, no TV appearances, not even album jackets. In the nineteenth century, the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick dreamed of a world “purely musical,” beyond politics and personality. Such a world now exists in the form of the MP3.

so, are there any songs that you consume "purely musically"?
if you download some random song and enjoy it, do you always search for more info on the artist?
what's your favourite song by someone you know nothing about?

i have a song on my harddrive called "thirty six hours" by someone named john cooper clarke. i think i got it from one of the mp3blogs, though possibly sl5k.
it's a cool enough song. meat'n'potatoes bar-rock music, but i dig the lyrics and vocals. but not enough to find out what else he's done, what he looks like (my mental image is a cross between mark e smith, and ray winstone), what his album covers look like, etc...

maybe i'm just being lazy. i usually enjoy knowing some backstory on artists; often enjoy their music more as a result, but it's also kind of cool listening to music with no imposed context.

so, thoughts?