For the Record

For my birthday a few days ago, I bought myself a new stereo system. Actually, I’ve assembled an old system—vintage old. I scoured eBay for a receiver and a set of speakers to match the Dual 1245 turntable I bought back in 1976 with one of my first paychecks as a new faculty member at Northwest Junior College. I was able to find a Technics SA-300 stereo receiver and a pair of Advent 3 bookshelf loudspeakers. Both were manufactured in 1976 or ’77 and are in superb condition. I am now in the process of dusting off some of my old vinyl long-playing records (LPs) and giving them a long-overdue listen. Some of them haven’t had a spin in 40+ years. Needless to say, I’m in heaven rediscovering the joy of music on a 12-inch vinyl, long-playing record album.

My new old stereo system. Components were manufactured circa 1976

Sometime in the ’80s, after the advent of CDs, my turntable was banished to storage. And only on rare occasions would I look through my collection of vinyl albums, which for decades now have been relegated to the bottom shelf of a bookcase in the den.  Now, in my retirement, that collection has been calling me, an impetus that coincidentally dove-tails with a wide-spread resurgence of interest in vinyl records. Ironically, this rejuvenation of an old-school format has not come from my generation, the baby boomers who grew up with the medium, but from the millennials whose most favored music delivery system is digital streaming.

In my opinion, the digitization of the music industry has been a double-edged sword. While music is much more available today, at the touch of your smartphone or laptop, unlimited streaming means that music has become a cheap commodity. Acquiring and listening to your music is now so easy and commonplace that its value has been greatly diminished. The experience of discovering an artist’s deep cuts, those album tracks that weren’t released as singles and didn’t become Billboard hits, has been largely lost.

The vinyl experience was a significant part of my formative years. Leafing through albums at the record store or searching through the pages of the record club catalogs, then shelling out my hard-earned cash, unwrapping the album cover, carefully handling the disk, and setting the needle down on the spinning turntable is an experience that is totally lost in the digital age. The tactile delights of this sensation cannot be adequately described, it must be experienced firsthand. Now, with my “new” stereo, I am rediscovering much of this experience. Listening to my old vinyl albums is like getting back together with old friends after a 40-year absence.

My collection has some iconic rock albums (Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds, Highway 61 Revisited), some of which I’ve acquired in recent years. However, my most cherished albums are those that I received in my initial shipment from Columbia House Record Club in the spring of 1970. If you were a music fan in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, then chances are you were a member of Columbia House or one of its rival music clubs at some point—you know, 10 vinyl albums or cassette tapes for $1 with a promise to buy a half dozen more at the regular price. The distribution of music through these mail order services was a cheap and easy way for music lovers to build their personal collections in the days before digital streaming put everything instantly at your fingertips. Ten records for a dollar was an offer I couldn’t refuse. And after I had some of my own spending money, from summer jobs and after-school work, Mama relented to my persistent requests and allowed me to join. Her only cautions were that I be responsible enough to take care of the payments and to be sure to send back the postdated selection cards if I wanted to forestall the automatic shipment of the monthly featured albums, which were usually ones that I wouldn’t want to buy. It seems that she already knew how such clubs worked, probably because she had been a member of The Literary Guild or the Book of the Month Club, which operated in similar fashion.  

I remember going to the mailbox and finding this good-sized package containing CSNY’s Déjà Vu, James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James, Three Dog Night’s It Ain’t Easy, Santana’s Abraxas, CCR’s Green River and their just released Cosmo’s Factory, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, and both of Chicago’s first two albums—double albums, at that—Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago II. I don’t think Mama ever complained about my music choices, even after I played “25 Or 6 To Four” twenty-five or six times in a row.

A page from a 1971 issue of Columbia House’s monthly selection catalog.
Image from the Internet Archive (https://archive.org).

In large part, those albums defined me at that stage of my life. I spent untold hours in my high school and college years sitting or lying on the floor, in front of a cheap portable record player with detachable plastic speakers, taking in the music, studying the album covers, perusing the cover art and artist photos, reading the lyrics and liner notes. I listened to the music intently; it was not just the background noise typical of Top-40 AM radio. I listened to the lyric structure and the intricate rhyming schemes, and marveled at the musicianship, compositions and arrangements.

After fulfilling my minimum purchase obligation, I canceled my membership and, after waiting a few months, I joined again. I did this at least three times. The last time I subscribed was in 1977 when Gena and I purchased our first brand new car, a Chrysler LeBaron with its “rich Corinthian leather.” (Does anybody still remember those Ricardo Montalban TV commercials?) The car also had an 8-track tape player. Columbia House was just the ticket for some traveling music to go along with our new ride.

But, enough of nostalgia. There really is something special to recordings on vinyl. There’s a warmth to the sound that is unique to this format. Vinyl fans, you know what I’m talking about. Digital is cleaner, more accurate, truer to the source, that can’t be denied, but hearing the lush warm sound inherent in analog recordings, softening of the edges compared to the antiseptic feel from a digital format, is as comforting as a warm blanket on a chilly morning.

Besides the obvious differences in packaging, handling and playing of vinyl records—the tactile sensation I mentioned above--versus the sterile qualities of digital, there is something wonderful in the LP format itself. Vinyl records have the physical attribute—not a “limitation”—of having two sides of about 20 to 25 minutes of music, three-quarters of an hour total. This is a perfect amount of time to stay immersed in the music. It requires you to turn the disk midway, keeping you engaged. Artists in the ’60s and ’70s used this time-frame to sequence their songs into a cohesive story. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album is a prime example. I find that this format lends itself to listening through an entire album from the first track on Side One to the last song on Side Two. This is not so with CDs, which are nearly an hour in length, or with digital streaming where single tracks and shuffle modes are de rigueur.

I’ve only listened to a dozen or so albums in the last couple of days, but I look forward to getting to know my old records once again. And, there are record shops here in town and online where I plan to spend some time filling in the gaps in my collection of classic vinyl releases, and maybe some new ones too! In the meantime, I’m going to grab another cup of coffee, stretch out on the floor, and give Cosmo’s Factory a long overdue spin.

A Word to Ponder

deep cut (noun): a piece of music by a singer or group that is little known in comparison to their other music; something that is recognizable or familiar only to passionate enthusiasts of a specified area.
Source: www.lexico.com
    

Song of the Day

“I Heard It Through The Grapevine”
by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cosmo’s Factory (1970)

Sure, there are some more familiar versions of this classic song. It was first popularized by Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1967 and then made iconic a year later by Marvin Gaye. But CCR covered it too, with an 11-minute jamfest that was included on their 1969 album, Cosmo’s Factory. Very few people today are familiar with this version, and if they say they recall it, they’re probably remembering the 3-minute “radio-friendly” version released in 1973 and re-released in 1976. But, if you love CCR’s other work, you owe it to yourself to give this extended version a listen. Better yet, seek it out on vinyl and turn up the volume and the bass.