Friday, July 8, 2011

A box of delights: or, when the needle falls.





A sudden yearning for old records, fed by a comment by Stephen Fearing led me to search the internet to see if I could still buy a record player. Years ago, before I worked in children's books I would divide up my painting time by the length of a record. You had to stop painting to turn them over.
And yet there was something so much more satisfying about the crackle and the fall of the needle and the slight up and down of something slightly warped and scratched by playing.
So now, once again I can listen to me old records. And some, like Stephen's Out to Sea, are so familiar, though I had forgotten that I also had Blue Line. Others, like Radical Dance Faction and Ancient Beatbox had slipped out of my memory.
Until the needle fell.
Music is like scent.
It brings back such memories.

3 comments:

  1. Music can string memories together like beads.

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  2. I found my old record player and a stack of records a few weeks ago, but I've still not figured out how to connect it to the speakers! What a Ludite!!!
    (my old records are mostly Moody Blues and Led Zeppelin with a little ABC thrown in! What a mixture :D )

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  3. I have a system with a player on it (wouldn't buy one without) and also got a record player to connect to my computer so I can put some of the disks on my mp3 player too. There is nothing so nice as a vinyl record being played

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