Location: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
State/Province: Pennsylvania
Country: United States
Postby Dave Mudgett »
I have records too, but I can no longer put up with the 'pop pop crackle crackle'.
I agree that if it's real bad it can be a deal breaker. But I dunno, I have had some records over 40 years, and I would honestly miss the occasional pop on some of them that I have been listening to all these years.
A lot of people these days are heavily invested in removing all mechanical imperfections from art. Is it really so much better to scrub old 78 RPM records to hear Robert Johnson or A.P. Carter in a sort of faux Hi Fi, when the original recordings weren't like that? Or how about scrubbing finger noises off an acoustic guitar recording? I know people who do that now, and I think it's bogus. I guess it's a matter of personal taste where to draw the line.
On the fault-tolerance issue - it doesn't take much to make something like a CD unplayable, but an old LP can have scratches galore and still be playable. That is the idea of fault-tolerance, IMO.
Dave, I know what you mean about missing the pops you've grown used to! I have all the LPs I collected from 1968 (unfortunately my collection up to '68 disappeared under the kind of circumstances that could befall a 17-year old) until the LP disappeared entirely from "record stores" (remember them? I miss them terribly.) I have always been extremely meticulous about handling and caring for them properly, so they are all in very good shape, but the occasional pop or crackle is/was virtually impossible to avoid entirely. I've got a couple of albums that have one skip that I'm so used to that when I listen to my CD copy of the same album, it doesn't sound right!
Having carried my near-obsessive fastidiousness about LP care over to how I handle my CDs, I'm a little mystified by those who have posted that they have lots of scratches on their CDs. But I was naive enough to believe in their greater indestructibility until recently, when I heard a news report about how the commercial-grade CD will start to degrade within five years! Duped again! If I'm careful, my 35-year old LPs are as playable today as ever. Ah, progress!
This discussion hits close to home, as my day job for the past twenty years has been as manager of a small independent record store. The article absolutely nailed the truth of the situation from the perspective of the indie store. Our store is most certainly at a crossroads; we have a loyal and eclectic clientele, but we've still had to branch out into cards and novelties(not at all my strong suit.) We've done a lot to promote and support the local music scene, as there's been a real rebirth of that in our area. This is a healthy development, and I suspect our indie-oriented clientele will outlast the major label CD itself. But then what? We really don't know, and we talk about it every day.
Bill's comments about listening to Coltrane with his son made me smile. My two kids are out of the house now, mostly, but over the years it has been fun to to watch them range through my record and CD collection: grazing, exploring; everything from dub to juju to outside jazz. And with the stereo in the living room, many of those sonic adventures were shared and talked about together.
Anyway, as the business and distribution paradigms shift, I'm at least optimistic enough to believe that music as art and expression will survive.
