Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Long Playing
In a delightful change of Chucklehut pace, we’re getting ready for my sister to visit with her husband and daughter on Saturday. They’re staying with us a week, during which time they’ll have the study as their guest room. Since it’s where ol’ Hurlbutt Packrat, my desktop conduit to the ubernurt, lives, I don’t know what kind of updating capacity I’ll have, but fret not - there’s plenty of chuckle left in the hut, and I’ll catch you on the flip side if not before.
Speaking of plenty of (x) in the (y), I was pulling things together in the study a few weeks ago in anticipation of impending guestage, when I decided once again to tackle the closet. Every few years I crack this closet open, remove tons of questionable surplussage from its depths, and then somehow a few years later it’s once again chokablok with scrap lumber, old copies of the Sears-Roebuck Wish Book, and what appear to be rhinestone-studded codpieces. Anyway, it had to be re-cleaned yet again, goddamn it, so off I went. This time it was a pretty straightforward job, though, much to my relief, and before long I had mostly finished the job. It was then that I rediscovered an old shopping bag that I knew, before I peeked inside, held inestimable treasure: my old LPs.
You see, at one point (you MySpace whippersnappers may find this amusing) music was recorded on plastic, or even shellac, disks, which were played by dragging a tiny needle along a barely-less-tiny groove that ran around in a spiral hundreds of times before petering out at a blank space near the center. (This is where we got both the phrases “get your groove on” and “petering out.") The device on which such items were played was a “phonograph,” and I had one. I had several, actually, over the years, and at times I had hundreds of these “long playing” albums. They rotated 100 times every three minutes and played for 22 minutes or so on a side; then you flipped them over and got a fresh 22 minute set of tunes. Sweet!
I had my phonograph hooked up to my stereo system for many years, but eventually I stopped using it. Cassettes were easier to play, didn’t scratch, and took up less space. Then CDs preempted all my analogue media. Now I’m mostly relying on my ‘pod and the radio, and it’s been so long since I listened to my LPs that I’d forgotten I’d even kept a few of them. Because here’s the thing: more than any cassette and much more than any CD, I formed emotional attachments to some LPs. Because of their large format, they often had eyecatching art, at which I’d stare vacantly for 22 minutes or so at a time, over and over again. Some of them even had special features, like fold-open covers or decorative sleeves. Sometimes they were just old and rare, which was possible with a technology that ran back to the 40s. Anyway, I had a whole crapload of LPs and I really liked them. Some I even loved, in a non-physical kind of way.
When I finally put the phonograph in a box and stashed it in the closet, I got rid of a lot of LPs but I kept a select few - and with Evi coming soon, and my cleaning out the closet, I found them again. I don’t plan to re-configure my sound system to be able to play them again, but I took a few minutes and went through the stack, reliving my experience of each of them. Good times, people - and though I can’t bring you along on that particular recollective journey, I can give you the signposts with this list of THE LPS I STILL HAVE (in officially random order):
* The Persuasions: Street Corner Symphony (nice pebbled cardboard cover)
* Pink Floyd: Relics (cartoon calliope cover art)
* Jethro Tull: Stand Up (original 1969 fold-open cover with a photo of the band that stands up)
* Randy Newman: 12 Songs (original 1970 cover)
* The Ventures: Let’s Go (original 1963 cover)
* Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick (original 1972 cover art with 11 page newspaper parody)
* Bob Dylan: Biograph
* Emerson Lake and Palmer: Tarkus (fold-open cover with cartoons)
* Best of Chess Blues (double LP)
* John Mayall: Jazz Blues Fusion (with Blue Mitchell) (original cover from 1972)
* Jethro Tull: Passion Play (fold-open cover with parody “program” for the Passion Play)
* Emerson Lake and Palmer: Brain Salad Surgery (fold-open cover with art by Geiger)
* Les Baxter: Soundtrack to “Hell’s Belles” (original cover of film soundtrack from 1969)
* Jethro Tull: This Was (original 1968 fold-open cover with concert photos)
* (The) Ventures in Space (original 1964 cover: “All of these unusual and other-worldly sounds have been created with musical instruments rather than electronic gimmicks")
* Rick Wakeman: The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth (fold-open cover)
* The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio (original cover from 1969 - a true landmark of jazz-blues fusion)
* The Blues Project: Projections (original 1966 cover)
* Moby Grape: Grape Jam (rare improvisational studio work; original 1968 cover)
* Tom Lehrer: That was the Year that Was (I have no shame - in fact, I still have several of these tracks memorized)
* Dr Demento’s Delights (original 1975 release - back when he was part of the counterculture)
* Eric Idle and Neil Innes: The Rutland Weekend Songbook (original 1976 cover)
* Bill “Silver Throat” Cosby: Bill Cosby Sings (serious rockin’ blues from the “I Spy” era; original 1967 cover with Bill in sombrero and handlebar moustache)
* Jethro Tull: Living in the Past (original 1972 fold-open cover with 8 pages of photos)
* Talking Heads: The Name of This Band… (2 LPs with photo sleeves)
* Ennio Morricone: Colonia Sonopa Originale del Film “Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly - with Italian liner notes and stills from the film)
* The Japanese Bach Scene (1969)
* Genesis: Foxtrot (foldopen cover with band photos)
* The Dickies: Dawn of the Dickies
* The Dickies: Incredible Shrinking Dickies
* Golden Throats (compilation of famous people desecrating famous songs)
* Papa John Creach and Friends (original 1971 cover; album features Slick, Garcia, and a host of other luminaries)
* Quincy Jones with Ray Charles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for “In the Heat of the Night” (original 1967 cover)
* Stravinsky: Firebird Suite (Stokowski conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1943 or ‘44 on three 78 rpm albums in a big portfolio with awesome art front and back of a giant about to be impaled through the forehead by a shining knight with a firebird)
* The Story of Old Mack (my favorite album from my earliest days, when I sort of looked like the kid on the cover)
It may not be much, but it’s plenty for me. I don’t even need to play most of them. It’s just nice to have them hanging around. I hope they get along with my sister next week. I’d hate to have to choose between them.
