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January 12, 2003
mark thomas I've been listening to my old records. LPs. 33-1/3, 45, and 78 RPM platters. Watching records spin is a part of the story of what you are listening to. The needle sits where it sits on the surface of the record, what came before and what is to come sit in patient observation on either side, and from where the needle sits you have a mental idea of where you are in the music, in the poem, in the story being read. The cracks and scratches on all these old records which I listened to time after time after time, those scratches became part of the music. Hearing some of this stuff remastered from their original source material, hearing it all perfect and crackless on CD - it always sounded wrong to me. It still sounds wrong. I like the rudeness of the surface noise near the end of Alicia De Larrocha's recording of Joaquin Turina's Sanlucar de Barrameda, Sonata Pintoresca, 3rd Movement (La playa; Los pescadores de bajo de Guia). To me the music she plays sounds incomplete without the 5 almost vulgar snapping noises that come one after another at an average rate of 33 and one-third times per minute at around 11 minutes into the music. I have a box of LPs called "The Golden Pages of Polish Pianistic Art," published by Polskie Nagrania and distributed by Ars Polona. My mother bought these records in Warsaw in the early 1960s, and as a teenager in the 1980s I must have listened to each of these records a thousand times. They were beautifully packaged, and I used exquisite care when taking the records out of the sleeves. I still feel that they are beautiful things. These records have not been played since I listened to them before leaving for college. So many of the performances on these records are still emblazoned on my mind. Playing these records today feels as new and exciting as the first times I played them a long time ago. I listened to Maria Barrowna, Jozef Smidowicz, Jerzy Zurawlew, Stanislaw Szpinalski. While the other kids in my high school classes were listening to Styx I was listening to the above mentioned Polish pianists playing music by Maciejewski, Dandrieu-Friedman, and Moniuszko-Melcer. This set of records also included performances by what I would eventually learn were the usual suspects: Paderewski, Godowsky, Hofmann, Rosenthal, Friedman -- all playing Chopin, Chopin, and more Chopin. If you are wondering where I have been the past few weeks, you would have found me at the local Salvation Army store picking through the trash heap of LP records that sits between the electronics section and the clothing department. And then you'd have found me sitting here on this spot watching the records spin and watching me re-open my mind to the delicate and sensitive imperfections of vinyl. Some of these records are badly warped. They always were. I got used to it, and listened at what was under the noise and distortion. I hope that I will never stop listening to what is under the surface noises. I just like watching the long plays spin. It is the perfect accompaniment to listening to what is on the records. Watching CDs spin is a rude substitute. I don't have a CD player that lets me watch the CD twirl at its obscene speeds, but if I did I would probably throw it out the window right about now, having been calmed by the site of my records spinning and spinning and spinning. « What's So Funny? • sorabji.com • Long Lines and Lotteries »
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