Saturday, July 22, 2006
The Virgin Suicides - Alone Again, Naturally
Next day, same time, our phone rang. We answered it immediately, and after some confusion (the phone was dropped), heard a needle bump down on a record, and the voice of Gilbert O'Sullivan singing through scratches. You may recall the song, a ballad which charts the misfortunes of a young man's life (his parents die, his fiancee stands him up at the altar), each verse leaving him more and more alone. It was Mrs. Eugene's favorite, and we knew it well from hearing her singing along over her simmering pots. The song never meant much to us, speaking as it did of an age we hadn't reached, but once we heard it playing timidly through the receiver, coming from the Lisbon girls, the song made an impact. Gilbert O'Sullivan's elfin voice sounded high enough to be a girl's. The lyrics might have been diary entries the girls whispered into our ears. Though it wasn't their voices we heard, the song conjured their images more vividly than ever. We could feel them, on the other end, blowing dust off the needle, holding the telephone over the spinning black disk, playing the volume low so as not to be overheard. When the song stopped, the needle skated through the inner ring, sending out a repeating click (like the same time lived over and over again). Already Joe Larson had our response ready, and after we played it, the Lisbon girls played theirs, and the evening went on like that.
moled at 7/22/2006 09:38:00 AM
Sunday, July 16, 2006
I was alone, I took a ride,
I didn't know what I would find there
Another road, Maybe I
Would find another kind of mind there
Ooh, then I suddenly see you
Ooh, did I tell you I need you
Every single day of my life...
Got to get you into my life
Beatles Revolver
From everything2.com (and this is one person's opinion):
Most people who are truely passionate about music are usually passionate about vinyl. I know I am. My friend exposed me to the wonder of vinyl records about a year ago and I haven't gone back. Everything about them is beautiful. Vinyls release the real, soft, pure sound of the music. I love the simple perfection of analog: the slow spinning of the turntable, the stylus vibrating in the grooves, resonating every note perfectly, being able to watch, feel the music as it plays. Vinyls have emotion. It's not a little computer coverting 1s and 0s on a round piece of plastic back into sound. How soulless. Records are sound. They are the embodyment of the music, and how it was intended to be. CDs may sound "cleaner" but the sound is so hard, so sharp, so impersonal.
MP3s have even less soul. In fact MP3s soul has been cast into hell. They take away physical media all together. Now you don't even have your plastic disc with 1s and 0s. You don't have something you can touch or see. With MP3s all you have a is magnetic plate inside a big metal box, or a little peice of circut board encased in plastic. That's even more impersonal than a CD. MP3s remove so many elements from the song, degrading the 1s and 0s of the CD even further for its cute little compression scheme. The sound is sharper than a knife. It's music with square edges. It's so bitter, so heartless, even moreso than CDs. Is it worth trading the lifeblood of your music so that you can store 1000 soulless, recordings on your magnetic plate?
Don't get me wrong. I still buy CDs now and then and do download MP3s. But if I could I would abandon them. Unfortunatly you can't play vinyls in the car, nor can you take them on a walk. And sadly many artists don't publish their music on vinyls anymore. Also many older albums are out of print on vinyl making them difficult to find. CDs and MP3s are a necessary evil these days.
---
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
take these broken wings and learn to fly
all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise
moled at 7/16/2006 09:07:00 AM
