So, up from the basement came my old records. And the trip the musicians planned for you takes you somewhere. But I am going to say that everything, as a whole, is just so much more enjoyable. I'm not going to make claims of some sort of sonic miracle that occurs when stylus hits groove. It can clearly sound just as good (or bad) as any other method of music storage and reproduction. The inner sleeve, gatefold, cover, type, art.all of it working together, encouraging attention, focus. It's an experience that has to be planned by the musicians. Albums, though, are something you can't really ignore, because in 17 minutes or so they demand your attention as you need to lift, flip, clean and start side 2. We're also limited in attention, which has, at least in my case, gotten worse over the years. As "receivers" of the information we're profoundly limited. Sure, there are limitations, as there are with everything. It's not something I would have thought of. It's entirely visible with your eyes, and yet so mysterious.
45-degree cuts? A single groove that somehow produces two channels? I mean, the music is literally right there. You sample that at a rate that basically works. You take waveform in the analog domain, where we all live. I look at a CD and I kind of understand the deal with how it functions. The experience of opening an album coaxing the disc out of the sleeve placing it on a turntable, cleaning it, carefully lining up the stylus with the lead-in groove and.with the descent.a soft pop.and, somehow, music, taking you on a journey. Committing real money.and being invested in what's going to happen. The whole experience of music stores talking with a proprietor whose tastes help you find new things (hi, long-ago-closed Tom's Tracks in Providence! hey there, long-ago-closed Town and Campus in Plymouth!) flipping through bins of beautiful covers reading Robert Christgau's haiku-like descriptions of music in his guide trying to figure out what the hell he was trying to say.Īnd then, selecting-sometimes on instinct-and bringing it home. The Waysideīut, in that ubiquity, we've left so much behind. And streaming has been, well, awful for artists and completely eliminated the whole idea of "owning" an album.you almost don't even care whether you've "selected" something.with no cost, there's no need to engage, research, or even think about it. The move to digital lost the physical media entirely, so even the size-reduced "cover" was gone, tactile experience lost. Leaving cassettes aside, the transition from vinyl to CDs basically lost the album art and liner notes. It's a great soundtrack, but geez.nerd.)įor the most part, over the years changes to "music storage" were motivated by either "convenience" (vinyl LPs weren't something you could play "portably" CDs took up space etc) or "quality" (much less common, but CDs were an attempt to be better and more robust than vinyl basically all other attempts at improving quality have failed in the broad market - people don't seem to care).īut at each point, something was lost in the transition. (Embarrassingly, I think the first album I bought with my own earnings was the Jaws soundtrack. Over the years, along with that equipment came a lot of music starting, of course, with LPs. (Sadly, it was later all stolen out of my dorm room in college.) I think nearly all of two summers' wages went into this, and the rack to put it in. The first thing I ever saved up to buy, in a serious way, was a decent stereo: a Sansui integrated amp, Thorens turntable, Nakamichi TX-2 tape deck and a pair of AVID 230 speakers. Music has always been an important part of my life. Many of those are major advances certainly, I wouldn't want to go back to the days before computing was ubiquitous.
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Part of that involves going through many technological transitions: computers cars TV cable, satellite cell phones BBS systems internet touch-tone phones. I'm sure it's clear from everything I write, but I am, as they say, an Old.
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