We gave away all of our old LP records last year, thinking that vinyl disks were lost to a page of history. That now seems to have been a mistake.
Watching the CBS Sunday Morning show this morning, I was fascinated by a segment featuring two small American companies that are pressing out vinyl music disks for a growing market. Now I’m regretting giving away all those black pieces of plastic slipped into wildly-decorated cardboard sleeves. But why is vinyl coming back?
It turns out that the vinyl recordings have much better sound than any of the newer cds, mp3s and digital devices. The music is richer, heat-pressed as lines into the vinyl, capturing more of the essence of sound, whereas the digital music is in scattered packets of bytes and the ear apparently makes up for what it thinks it should hear, even if it’s not there. Amazing, but definitely not what the music aficionado would want. (I’m obviously not an aficionado.)
I remember seeing the old 78 records at my grandmother’s home, and the old Victrola-type player that had to be cranked to turn the turntable. Then came the small 45-speeds with a single song on each side. The hole in the centre was too large for the LP (Long Play) record players, so there were plastic fillers to pop in to make them fit. Remember them?
My first record player was a portable built into a hard shelled case, a red bottom and a white top. Outer space was the rage in the 70s, and so my next record player was a stereo that reflected the trend. The speakers were round black balls, almost the size of bowling balls, and the turntable was centred in a rounded, UFO-shaped case with a black transparent lid. The set had nice sound. It was really cool.
My stereos and vinyl records are long gone, merely fond memories of my history.
