Music is a wonderful thing
Record Player
Best of The Eagles back cover
I have been listening to it on a daily basis all my life and in these high-tech-state-of-the-art and other cliched phrases I could use about the way music is marketed to us masses - it is easier than ever. It is cheaper than ever and its probably of a such a high quality that our ears don't even appreciate it. I am speaking for myself in case you want to write and challenge me on that last point.
Technical Process
I can download music while sitting at my laptop (in bed, on the sofa in Starbucks) and have it immediately coming into my ears by the process of - well I have not idea how it works, perhaps it's magic? I can still buy a CD from a shop that sells music and then download it onto itunes and then my ipod and then I can have it with me 24 hours a day - if I so choose. I can have music playing from my laptop, from my tv, from my car radio, from my ipod dock. If I so wished I could install integral speakers into the ceiling of my home and have music piped into every room including the bathroom. If I so choose.
Vinyl Discs
But it didn't used to be like that. I used to save up my pounds shillings and pence and buy vinyl records. I will provide a photograph of the circular black vinyl discs for those too young to have a clue what I'm talking about.
This is a long playing vinyl record which plays at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute
And then I would take my record out of its paper sleeve and play it on my record player which was kept on the floor of my bedroom. It had a plug and 3 speeds, 72 rpm, 33rpm and 45 rpm and a speaker. You can see the two knobs on the front, off/on and the volume. There was nothing else to control.
Mine was like this
I've Got a Record Player
The breaking news I'm building up to is that I now have a record player. It's true. I have a 'new' record player and old records and have spent a very pleasant day playing them. I hadn't remembered how labour intensive it is. I had to constantly keep tending the machine, changing the record, putting them back in their paper sleeve and then the slightly awkward more difficult process of slipping the paper bit back into the cardboard bit. You know what I mean? If you don't get the angle right it just doesn't slip in smoothly (yak yak fnar fnar).
I started with The Eagles and as soon as I had placed the needle on the first track (with small coin fixed on the top for extra weight), heard the familiar crackle, and then the introduction. One of These Nights burst out into the room I was back in my bedroom and a 16 year old - alone- learning the words. That was my aim, to listen to each track continuously for days and days and months and months until I knew the song and then not only would I know the track off by heart, I knew how long the pause would be before the next introduction to the next song would take and come in, on time, with the first line. I could not listen to this song anywhere else unless I took it round my mates house to play on her record player, there was no way to listen if I wasn't right by my record player in my room.
I've had a blast from the past with Best of The Eagles and a few Rod and The Faces and I've re experienced Frankie Goes to Hollywood ' Relax' and danced in the lounge and now I've discovered that I actually do like Led Zepplin which I truely didn't know. I know I like Stairway to Heaven, I mean who doens't, but my memory of Led Zep as a teenager was a terrible uncomfortable noise coming out of the sixth form common room. I pretended to like it to impress a boy once, but I was too besotted with The Bay City Rollers at the time to give Plant and Page much attention.
A Led Zepplin record wot I like
I announce to the world that I do in fact like Led Zepplin. I have to go now the neighbours are banging on the door and seem angry...
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