Evolution of Technology – Vinyl Records

In another post on this page, I mentioned having bought a “retro” turntable and used 1960s-era records. I have found picture frames designed to frame vinyl record covers. I bought several and decorated some space in my back room with covers of albums I found in thrift stores. I have read about the mutual impact, in the ’60s and ’70s, between album cover art and art trends in general…at its best, back in the day, cover art was not just aesthetically pleasing, it was culturally influential.

Ahhh, Luke, those of us who grew up in the “West” have no idea of what it was like in Eastern Europe in the past. Thanks for that reminder and thanks so much for using Aaron’s “What’s a record” line from one of his best “It’s a Tech World After All” cartoons on Boomer Tech Talk (http://bit.ly/TW8Record).

And, thanks for your comment. It’s fun to look back now and then. I just never want to be the characters in Springsteen’s “Glory Days!” lol…

You are so right about the cost of 45s and the cost of “a song” today. How ironic. But, I still loved holding those 45s and LPs, and browsing the stores, sometimes going to used record stores and finding cool old albums for 5 or 10 cents! I still have many of those with their 5 cent price tags still attached! Thanks for the comment.

So you’re a homeboy from El Lay! The other day, Bruce and I were trying to remember the name of a used record store on Fairfax. Bruce remembered it was called Aaron’s. Outstanding selection. When I left Los Angeles in 1982 for what turned out to be for good, I sold about one-third of my vinyl albums to Aaron’s for about 60-70 bucks.

I have heard stories/reports of people going totally nuts after losing their iPods. At first, I didn’t understand why that would be such a big deal … sure, losing some hardware means you lost something that cost a couple of hundred bucks, perhaps. But that wouldn’t seem to be the end of the world. Then I realized that a person may invest 2, 3, 4, 5, thousand dollars assembling a play list! Yowzah! Now we’re talking a real loss, not to mention the time it took to located, download, compile, organize and catalogue the tunes. As I may have written elsewhere on this page, I personally do not have an iPod, but I imagine that 80% of my friends, and surely 99% of my students, own one.

I never thought of the irony of holding a transistor radio in your hand, to holding a mobile phone in your hand, both devices churning out music, bigger and bigger systems having filled the gap between the two hand-helds. You get 10 out of 10 on that one, Keith!

A year or so ago, I purchased a newly-manufactured turntable, CD player, audiocassette player and radio rolled into one. I use it as a simple and inexpensive “retro” sound system in my back room, which is essentially a bar. I also bought about 2 dozen used early-1960s “easy-listening” vinyl albums over a period of a few months. When I entertain out back, serving cocktails and so on, the authentic “lounge music” produces a cool vibe.

I think it’s time we changed that tune in your head to another Monkees song that is less popular but really demonstrates their range of music and how they were not just a “Bubble Gum” band, but were pretty darn good (as Bill noted below). Do you know “Shades of Grey”? Check it out as it is terrific! I love that this post has stuck with you! Thanks for coming back Suzanne!

It’s the “American Way!” lol… but I agree with you. Look how iTunes is now milking The Beatles catalog and it’s 4 decades old!

Hello, Marta, apparently your parents raised you right! I appreciate your contribution to this conversation.

Hello, Angela, as I wrote to Erin, you are right on the money in reference to talking about culture. I like the idea of “insider” and “outsider.” Sometimes, to be an “outsider” to one culture is to be an “insider” to another … think about the cultures in a middle school, for example, where the students who are in one cultural group define themselves in part by NOT being in another cultural group. Thanks for your perceptive comment.

What you are saying is really no different from any generation. It just manifests differently every couple of decades. Good observation Angela – thanks for commenting!

Hello, Skylar, as I wrote to Matt, I would like to know what vinyl recordings have caught your eye or attention. Are you choosing based on music…the performer/group/artist…the cover art…or some other criterion? Or are you choosing based on several criteria? Thanks for your comment.

Yeah Skylar!

I can relate to what your parents taught you: I don’t think it was because my parents taught me to, but somehow or other, over the years, I have come to appreciate vintage/retro material culture. I’m not a traditionalist, or conservative in thought or ideology, but I appreciate the quality, design and ethos of many vintage/retro/”old-school” items.

Love your candid and forthright comment Ethan. Yeah, I know many of the younger generation still “find” their music for free. I’ve heard that it’s a rebellion of sorts against the “big companies” but no matter how you rationalize it is still stealing. I’m currently in the Far East where they’ve refined that to an art with no consequences and the result is killing our record companies and hurting music in many ways. Thankfully, the balance is that almost any artist can put their music “out there” so the opportunities may even be greater, but the need to know how to market yourself is so much greater.

Hello, Erin, you’ve really put your finger on something: “habits of mind, heart and behavior” is a good definition of culture; and yes, there have long been cultures made up of people who share a love of a certain kind of music, a certain mode of recording it, and perhaps those who share lifestyles revolving around some aspect of music.

Hello, Matt, thanks for your comment. You are making some very good observations. Some day I would like to hear what vinyl recordings you have acquired. As for friendships, the older you get, the more remarkable it is to have people in your life who go back over half-a-century with you.

Hello, Jenna, your observation is valid and I appreciate your insight. Here is what I meant when I made the broad statement: I attended a private school that, for the first five of the six years I attended, required students to wear a prescribed military-style uniform. During the mid- and late 1960s, I kept my hair very short, when my friends from public schools were letting their hair grow longer and longer. Through most of high school, I was not permitted to watch television Sun. through Thursday nights, because the next night was to be a school night. In short, I grew up in a loving but somewhat conservative family environment. My parents often declared that they “didn’t understand the music kids are playing these days.” So when I became the owner of The Beatles’ The White Album, it was one of the first times that I stepped away from the “straight and narrow” lifestyle that I had lived for so many years. As the years went by, I became less and less conservative; by the time I was a sophomore in college, I was essentially a hippie, and two years later I dropped out of school to travel abroad and, in my twenties, follow my own path. But the roots of all those changes first were set when I began listening to The White Album in or around the 9th or 10th grade.

You are identifying one of the most interesting features of today’s approaches to listening to music: the sharing. When Bruce and I were young, the only way to share music was to bring your vinyl record over to your friend’s house and play it for him there; or he would come to your place and you’d play it there. At some point late in high school, I bought an audiotape boombox that I could plug into my stereo and record music and share it that way. But still, this all took time and energy. Now, to engage in the relationship-building act of sharing music, you can simply attach an audiofile to an email, or text your friend to check out a tune on youtube iTunes or the like. Instant sharing, and perhaps close bonding!

I think that your final comment is on the money: technology affords us so much by way of connection and information, yet it requires so much of our time and attention that the benefits are overlooked. I am delighted that you liked my stories of the vinyl in my life.

I didn’t think of that…yes, the choice to buy vinyl today can be preceded by checking out the tunes online, so that when you buy the vinyl today, you know exactly what you’re getting.

Wait until you’re in your fifties and think back on 5-6 decades of knowing one person, with both of you having gone though almost all of your ups and downs throughout those decades together. And remember, friendship is essentially “voluntary,” in a way that being a close relative, for example, is not. You have heard the old saying: “You can pick your nose…you can pick your friends…but you can’t pick your friend’s nose….”

Hannah, you made me laugh out loud comparing The Beatles’ “White Album” with anything from Britney Spears. Priceless and thank you for commenting!

If I appear to have made a judgment about my experience being in some way superior to any of today’s experiences with music, I didn’t mean that at all. I was only attempting to call attention to the kinesthetic and sensory experience of opening and handling (and smelling!) vinyl records as fulfilling in its own way. I truly would not suggest that my experience was better or more aesthetically sound than perusing youtube lists or looking through the catalogue of Pandora, iTunes or any other encounter with music recorded digitally. (By the way, I often visit youtube to listen to music, usually because a song pops into my head and I want to hear it, or because I read about a song in a news article and, because I am unfamiliar with it, I want to hear it. You can’t beat the immediacy and instant gratification that youtube makes possible!)

Thanks for the comment, Brittany. The memories that Bruce and I were resurrecting covered the years from about 1965-1980. Not too many years later, vinyl started getting phased out of circulation…music stores began selling vinyl at steep discounts and racks for CDs were installed. Audiotapes had become popular but were always sold near the racks of vinyl and, for a few years until audiotape started to disappear, CDs. The point is: the memories of which we wrote come from three to four-and-a-half decades ago. In three to four-and-a-half decades from when you were in your teens and early 20s — let’s say that will be roughly 2030 to 2045 — you’ll be looking back on the music you listened to then, and how it was recorded and played back, and comparing it to the way it will have turned out to be in 2020, 2030, 2040. I wonder what those not-yet-developed technologies will be?

Cynthia, the store you’re referring to is called Amoeba Music and it is almost directly across the street from where Wallach’s used to be. Amoeba is indeed a throwback to the times we allude to in this article. They have racks and racks of used LPs and many re-issues as well as current music released in vinyl. They also have hanging on their walls literally hundreds of 45s (aka “Singles”), most of which are waaayy over-priced. Your boyfriend obviously gets what we’re talking about, but it’s still a different world today. Thanks for the thoughtfully comment.

One of the great joys of music is to experience the memories a song brings back, and I think you are referring to that joy, Amanda. I have so many examples, but here is a quick one: a song from about 1968 or ’69 called “Ma Belle Amie.” ( And of course, it is on youtube!…rightcheah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyOg9G-0lR4 ) I don’t hear this song often at all — I don’t have it on CD or on any playlist — and it wouldn’t be played on any radio station very often because it was only a top-ranked song for a short while, and anything but an iconic teen anthem like “Satisfaction” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” But whenever I do happen to hear it, or even think of it or hum it, I am back in 1969, driving over the winding Coldwater Canyon Blvd. at about midnight, on my way home from a date with the young lady who at the time was the love of my life. I can smell the tan peacoat I was wearing, and the fragrance of her perfume that lingered in the car. During that specific drive home, what was playing on Radio KHJ as I swerved through the dark curves of Coldwater? “Ma Belle Amie.”

For me, songs always have evoked memories. When those memories were connected to a relationship, it often meant the end of that song in my life, as I didn’t like that particular connection. One song survived all relationships as I refused to let it become embroiled in anything as superficial as “a relationship!” That song is and was “My Girl” by The Temptations and always stood the test of time, for me!

Good insight, Hillary. Thanks for the post. When you were a kid — let’s say specifically a young teenager, around 14-16 or so — you were an insider to one culture and an outsider to another. You were an “outsider” to the culture at large, let’s call it the mainstream national culture, because to a greater or lesser degree, the values and norms of that culture mark you as ill-equipped yet to contribute to or participate in many of its key defining events (political decisions, policy formulation, commercial operations, and so on). Yet you were at the same time an insider to some culture with a membership consisting of your age mates. Maybe yours was the “jock” culture, or the “geek” culture, or some other such cultural group in your high school. Part of how you defined yourselves as members of the group involved recognizing the differences between you and your “insider” associates, and “outsiders.” The latter would have been not only in other groups of agemates, but between you and members of the mainstream cultural group, Age is a significant sorting criterion; and whenever a person is in one cohort (i.e., age group), it is not uncommon to at least sometimes wish to be in another. To compensate for that, a person celebrates what is best, or what “insiders” perceive to be best, about the cohort one is in. Hence, I can tell you all about what makes being in my late fifties good, whereas for you, the thought of being 58 would be dismaying. Whenever I think “I wish I were ___ years old again,” it is always with the rider “…as long as I could bring into that revisited age the ‘wisdom’ I have acquired up to this point in my life.” The putative accumulation of wisdom — the claim that I’ve acquired wisdom and I wouldn’t part with it — lies at the heart of the argument one builds in favor of being an age that is older than one that otherwise would “most devoutly to be wished” (as Shakespeare wrote).

I love your comment Emily. Very thoughtful, insightful, and refreshing! Thank you.

I have started bringing the concept of passion into my comments to my Introduction to Communication Studies class, the first class that all UNCW communication majors MUST take (even if they took a similar class at another, they still MUST take this intro class). I warn the students that the word passion comes from the Latin word pati, which means “to suffer.” If you are passionate about something, you are therefore willing to SUFFER as part of learning and doing it. This will, I hope, prevent a student from too loosely or blithely saying, “I’m ‘passionate’ about communication” or “I’m ‘passionate’ about public relations as a communication specialty area.” I think that the greatest of the Greek rhetors and rhetoricians WERE “passionate” about persuasion as a human endeavor. They were willing to “suffer” by allocating immense amounts of time into memorizing their speeches, working through the process of planning excellent spoken-language compositions, rehearsing their speeches. In the literal physical sense, they “suffered” as they strained lung and muscle to produce utterances loud or well-pitched enough to be heard by vast numbers of listeners in outdoor settings devoid of sound amplification systems other than acoustical enhancement perhaps afforded by some of those settings.

Thanks, Daniel, for reading and commenting on the article. A number of the posts made in response to this article refer to a kind of sadness that the time when Bruce and I were coming up is not merely years ago on a calendar, but an era that has come and gone, and had many attractive features about it. I am thinking that perhaps humans ever have and ever will yearn to be part of the past. The past is conceptualized as a static entity…understandable in a way that is similar to how branding makes a product “understandable.” In my early years of college, I would have given anything to have lived in the 1890s. I don’t remember what it was about that era that was so appealing, but I remember intentionally wearing facial hair in a style that was common in the 1890s (moustache blending into muttonchops, essentially a beard with the chin shaved) as my best attempt to go back to a time in which something happened that I wished I had experienced directly.

Scott, you are so right as are you in response DW, about the difference in the album art now and then. We wore out our albums just looking at the details all over them, including the sleeves that often would have the label’s other releases and stimulate another purchase. I think you, too, would enjoy the first “Evolution of Technology” article, Scott, on “The Transistor Radio.”

Joseph, you covered some territory here! Thanks for the comment. Yes, the relationship between Bruce and myself is socially constructed, as are all relationships. My affinity back in the day for vinyl was also socially constructed, conditioned as it was by choices I would make in response to what people said to me (or didn’t) with respect to music, records and performers; as well as socially constructed by and through my encounters with media messages. I think that a Sophist would proceed as follows: he (they were mostly males) would propose to his students an endoxa (that is, a statement that would more or less generally be accepted as true by most people)…in this case, something like “Music is something to appreciate as a boon to humans”; then he would guide his students in constructing a case in favor of that endoxa; and then he would guide them in constructing a case IN OPPOSITION to it; and finally, he would coach them in how to deliver the message as a speech, presented so passionately and charismatically that no listener could conclude whether the speaker stood in favor of or stood against the endoxa.

Well put, Joseph, and dare I infer that you were writing with intent to compliment? As I think I wrote to someone else on this page, I don’t know if my self-disclosre was at Level 3, but there was some that may have been. (Maybe we have to establish 2.5 as a level of interaction!) As an interviewer, make sure you keep your ear open for “missing information,” so that you can probe for it immediately. Thanks the comment.

As I think I wrote to another commentator on this page, I really don’t think you’ve missed out on something. I don’t want to give that impression. My reflections were more a set of observations of how technology has evolved, and how my life has or has not changed as a result. I think you’re correct, Jordan, the downsides of vinyl recordings are numerous. One you don’t mention is: they melt in the heat! I have hoisted a vinyl record from the shelf, pulled it from the sleeve…and watched the disc flop in my hands like pizza dough that has just been flattened out!

Thanks for the comment, Christy. Good catch on the historicity piece. You mentioned about how it must have been awesome to grow up near Hollywood. I do believe that Bruce and I were kids in L.A. during the last best years of living there. I have often thought that L.A. reached its peak at the ’84 Olympics (I lived in Tokyo at the time). It hasn’t been the same for me since, with its crowds and now slow traffic, and a certain hectic feel to life there. In some other posts on this page, people have addressed the issue of cultural insiders and outsiders. Here is an illustration of how to tell an insider from an outsider within the culture of L.A. Many celebrities live and roam around in L.A. It is not uncommon to encounter this or that start of film, t.v. or music on the streets of L.A., Hollywood or Beverly Hills. You can always tell who is and is not an insider by how someone reacts when he or she sees a celebrity. An outsider to L.A. culture goes crazy, smiling, giggling, OMG’ing, and so on, and maybe debating whether or not to get an autograph. An insider to L.A. may take covertly note of the celebrity, and feel a thrill of excitement in the moment. But the insider does not fawn over the celebrity or really even nonverball acknowlege him or her. If you do make direct contact, it would be in the briefest and least histrionic of ways…maybe you’d say, “I like your work,” and move on. How does one learn to do that? I don’t know, except that I learned it by observation, and somehow picking up on the idea that it’s not “cool” to get excited under those circumstances.

Hello, Lincoln, so you’re a collector? Were you talking just about music and film recordings (CDs, DVDs) or more than that? I’m a collector of many objects, ephemera, memorabilia and stuff…which in private I refer to with a cruder word than “stuff”! I have often thought it would be in my interest to list all the “stuff” I collect, so maybe this is a good an opportunity to do so. Here in no particular order other than what is popping into my head is what I have collected… a “collection” defined as three or more intentionally gathered items related by type: swizzle sticks; beer mats (the thick cardboard rounds placed under a cold beer on the counter of a bar); World War I trench art; matches; ashtrays from around the world; postcards; military insignia (U.S. and foreign); letter openers; fountain pens; hand-held ballistic weapons; coffee mugs; hats; Toby jugs; tattoos; decorative brass coffee pots and teapots; walking sticks; decorative magnets from places I’ve visited. That’s about all that come immediately to mind. Collections that are dormant (i.e., I haven’t, for whatever reason, added to these collections in years): wooden nickels; movie posters. Because I go out of my way to buy the following, they would be technically “collections,” I guess, but I don’t think of them as such, I just accumulate many, many of them: books, CDs, DVDs, liquors (I have a well-stocked bar), snapshots I’ve taken during the past fifty years. Holy cats… that’s a lot of, uh, “stuff.”

Thanks for the comment, Walker. I like what you’re saying about symbols. Elsewhere on this page, commentators have mentioned the difference between cover art on record albums, and the “shrunken” version of that art on CDs. Talk about symbols: At a certain point in the late ’60s and early ’70s, rock album covers were almost self-consciously, flagrantly abundant with visual symbols. Or so it was said by many rock critics and just plain consumers of rock music. The cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road, for example, was scrutinized exhaustively to infer from it some hidden meaning behind its visual symbology (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205310/Pictured-The-Beatles-album-cover-started-decades-long-conspiracy-theory.html).

If you enjoyed this article, Lucero, check out the first “Evolution of Technology” article, which was about “The Transistor Radio.” I do believe that one advantage of how music is distributed these days is that the individual has literally every kind of music available at their fingertips. Sometimes it may be so much choice as to be overwhelming but, other times is just means you can access anything and everything.

Thanks, Lindsay. I hope you are convinced that what we learn in COM 105 DOES have applicabilty to the world outside the classroom.

Jessica, thanks for your comments. You were able to catch the last few years of music stores. There was one here in Wilmington called Millennium Music. I used to love to browse in the racks. Classical music was racked in a special glassed-in and sound-proof room, with listening stations along one wall. Millennium went out of business — it was precisely where Bonefish Grill now is on Market and New Center — in approximately 2005. It broke my heart. Too many times in my life, I have had a favorite music store that I would spend hours browsing in, sometimes buying, sometimes not. Then one day I would notice that the racks were not getting re-plenished and the prices were suddenly dropping. It was because a new platform was emerging, and the new mode (monaural to stereo vinyl, stereo vinyl to CD and audiotape, etc.) was coming in. The last round of such change was CD to…well, to oblivion — what has replaced CD is audiofiles stored, shared, transmitted and played by the use of computers and telecommunications. At Millennium Music, one day I noticed fewer and fewer CDs…and then, not too many months later, out of business. The same thing is happening now with traditional DVDs…notice how cheap so many have become, and how Blu-Ray titles are more plentiful at Best Buy, Target and elsewhere.

In about the mid-1950s, singer Frank Sinatra and arranger Nelson Riddle pioneered the “concept album.” Instead of having simply a set of a dozen or so songs in one record package, the songs were carefully assembled in accordance with a theme, and sequenced for an artistic and emotional effect best produced by listening from the first song straight through to the last. For example, “In The Wee Small Hours” was a collection of wistful, rueful, blues-in-the-night, it’s-three-in-the-morning-and-I-can’t-figure-out-why-she-left-me songs, and Sinatra’s renditions of many of them are still held up as the gold standard. The “concept” concept, so to speak, endured for a while and, as far as I can tell, migrate into rock circles. The Moody Blues, whom I cited in the article, were famous for thematizing their albums. Sometimes, there was nothing for it but to listen to an album straight through; to do otherwise would feel unfulfilling. Many times I would listen to such an album and by the end of it, I would feel as though I had gone on and returned from an existential journey.

VERY interesting point, Katherine, about the rebellious impact of music then and now. I hadn’t thought of that at all.