I write a lot about music here. It’s been a constant in my life. First the radio. Then records. Probably 45s first. They cost 89 cents. If you didn’t have that plastic thing to snap into the middle of a 45, you had to lay it precise on the turntable by hand. If you got it wrong it would sound all wobbly. Kids today will never understand the struggle. Our record players had 4 speed settings. You only used the 16 rpm if you were searching for the devil messages or to find out if Paul McCartney was dead. Nobody had any 78 records anymore, so that speed was wasted. LPs were the 33s, of course, and they came to dominate my life. You had to ease them in and out of their inner jackets, avoiding finger prints at all costs. Anytime I’d see somebody holding an LP like a frisbee I’d make a mental note to not be their friend anymore. If your record had a skip in it, you lived with it. My copy of Led Zeppelin II skipped in the middle of “Whole Lotta Love” and even now when I hear it clean it sounds wrong.
© 2024 Tom Flannery
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