extracted from Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod -a few thoughts re vinyl vs mp3s on Record Store Day
Lara and The Trailers-Sugartown-Girls
in the Garage compilation
Following
on from yesterday, here’s another crackly ripped single. This is a cover of a
Lee Hazelwood song written for, and recorded originally by Nancy Sinatra. It
wasn’t a hit for Sinatra, but she was immensely popular in Singapore-which is
why this song was covered by Lara and The Trailers (from Singapore). Only the
title of the song is sung in English-the rest is indecipherable to me, it may
be Chinese or it may be Malayan, but it doesn’t really matter that much as it
sounds fairly good. It’s got that
“swingin’ 60’s” style, but clearly refracted through another culture. And
following on from yesterday- and it goes without saying- that without the
internet I couldn’t have really got hold of a copy of a single from Singapore
that was released in the 1960’s. Anything is possible of course, but some
things are more probable than not and I’m not that hip enough to have the
original 7”-in no doubt a cool-as-fuck picture sleeve. What really, and even
more so than yesterday, adds to the exotic appeal of this track, is that
crackly and scratchiness that appears deep within the grooves of the record as
if it’s a part of the song, but at the same time it’s only something that has
been added with time; like the ageing of a fine wine or the surface of an
antique piece of furniture. And herein lies the problem; what would the record
actually sound like if it was pristine? Would it lose something of that
otherness or am I attracted by that element too much? Maybe I should hear it in
a pure state, unaffected by jumps, crackles and surface noise. It’s possible
that there’s been too much fetishisation of old vinyl and I’ve been led astray
by at least two people whose taste and judgement I’d normally rely upon; John
Peel and Neil Young.
Peel
famously retorted to someone who complained that a track he was playing had too
much surface noise with the reply that “Life has surface noise” and Neil Young similarly
refused to record using digital equipment for a very long time. This is without
mentioning Jack White issuing singles on his own label as 7” singles, rather
than in any other format and the retro love-in for 180g album reissues on
vinyl. (The latter costs a fortune by the way, and I think that unless you’ve
got high-end equipment to play it on (I haven’t) and very good ears (not me,
too much loud music over the last 35 years) then the record companies are
selling us the Emperors’ New Clothes).
Whilst we may go all misty-eyed about
12” albums and great sleeve art that’s all now been made redundant by the birth
of CD and digital formats and we similarly mourn the loss of 7” singles with
all their juke box connotations, let’s face it-it was all a pain in the arse.
Most of the sleeve art for albums was crap design or sub-Roger Dean hippy stuff
and 7 “ singles were always a nuisance to store and find. There was nothing
more frustrating than finding your favourite record being so scratched or
warped that it was unplayable and not being able to get another copy without
spending a lot of money or time.
Give me mp3’s any day-I can live without
surface noise.
Get/see Totally Shuffled here
Kindle e book http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA
What "Totally Shuffled" is all about:
One track per day for 366 days on a broken iPod. 366
tracks out of a possible 9553. From the obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the
obscure (Karen Cooper Complex). From the sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the
risible (Muse). From field recordings of
Haitian Voodoo music to The Monkees. From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s
blues, jazz, classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between.
This is what I listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of
never wanting to hear any more music again. Some songs I listened to I loved,
and some I hated. Some artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others
received a bit of critical kicking. There’s memories of spending too many hours
in record shops, prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself
over tracks that I’d completely forgotten about. But with 40 years of listening
to music, I realised that I’ll never get sick of it. I may have fallen out of love with some of
the songs in this book, but I’ll never fall out of love with music
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