Return of the Record

 

Scenario A:

Last Christmas we bought our oldest daughter, Little One, age 17 at the time, a record player. As you may or may not know, vinyl has been making a slow and steady comeback over the past decade. Her music tastes lie in a “retro” direction. Although she has a varied array of musical interests, her main favorites flourished in the mid- to late-60s: Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas. So we thought the record player – plus some albums we picked up for her – would be right up her alley.

She played it a lot, off and on, over the winter. Then, to our surprise, she kinda dropped it. I bought her some Rolling Stones, Kinks, and Neil Young albums for her graduation. But by and large the record player stayed packed up, suitcase-like, in a corner of her room. Clothes piled atop it. We thought she might take it to college with her, but her dorm room really is tiny and cramped, so she left it here.

 

Scenario B:

My youngest daughter, Patch, currently age 14, loves to thrift shop. She’s a hustler and makes money doing a variety of chores around the house, babysitting, and refereeing soccer games. So every other week or so she asks us to drive her to a thrift shop where she can seek out hidden gems. Like her dad in a used book store. Last week, however, the thrift store came to her, in the form of our annual town-wide garage sale.

Despite her outgoing personality and oversized drive, she is a little shy at times, so she asked me to come along and help her peruse the sales. We had limited time before she had to get to the soccer fields, so we could only hit a few homes. Much to her chagrin, she scored a big zero. Even a driveway with three racks of clothes (the owner was a man who proudly stated he had three daughters and a lot of clothes to sell) failed to yield a purchasable item.

But the last house we went to, well, something unexpected jumped out at me.

 

Scenario C [Scenario A + Scenario B]:

There was a box of old records at this last garage sale. Hmm, I wondered, as some unseen force caused my legs to bend and my body to lean forward, hands not quite under my own power rummaging the way they used to decades ago through the stack of vinyl albums. To be honest, most of the records were junky throwaway 80s stuff from artists I’ve never heard of. But after riffing through the forty or so albums, I noticed three in my hands:

   Yes, 90125

   Billy Joel, An Innocent Man

   Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb

Why these three? Well, since mid-July I’ve been listening to nothing but Yes on my walks and in the late evenings on my iPhone. 70s Yes, that is. Stuff that I never heard of on radio, or on those records I had of them many, many years ago. And I thought the Billy Joel would be a nice gift for my daughter – she likes him in addition to all those 60s icons. The Tchaikovsky – well, just scroll through the “Musicalia” tag in these here electronic pages for my (dormant) love of classical music.

All three for $9 total. Not bad.

I took a pic of the albums and sent it off to Little One at university, along with a text asking her permission to test them out on her record player. “Sure! Sounds Cool!” she texted back.

Last Saturday afternoon, with about an hour of free time on my hands before having to pick up Patch at the soccer fields, I listened to the Tchaikovsky album in all its glory. There was crackling, but no skipping, and that only added to the atmosphere. I was swept up immediately. The fact that each side of the album only held 20 minutes of music was a little jarring, but no mind. I gleefully turned it over after the first movement to listen to the shorter remaining two. There may have been goose bumps running down my arms. Truth be told, it was probably the highlight of my weekend.

For my birthday last month the girls got me a $25 gift card to a local used book and record shop. Since I’ve got about fifteen or so books jostling for position in the Immediate On-Deck Circle, yep, you know where this is going: I decided to pick up some classical albums this afternoon.

Now, the Rolling Stones and Kinks albums cost me about $25 each at B&N. There was another store in the mall devoted exclusively to vinyl, but those records all went from $40 to $60 a piece. What would I be able to score at this used book / record outfit? Would they be of any quality?

Turns out, yes and yes. Er, I mean, they had a selection of about fifty or sixty used albums, each retailing for $5.99. And as I found out later, they were of good quality. Some crackling, but that’s part of the charm. But one of vacuum sealed and the others I inspected had nary a scratch upon their surfaces.

Here’s what I scored:

   Wagner, Selections from Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, Tristun und Isolde, Gotterdammerung

   Rimsky-Korsakoff, Scheherazade, Flight of the Bumblebee, Song of India, Capriccio Espagnol

   Prokofiev, Alexander Nevsky

   Zubin Mehta conducting William Tell (Rossini), Leonore Overture No. 3 (Beethoven), Capriccio Italien (Tchaikovsky), Capriccio Espagnol (Rimsky-Korsakoff)

I just listened to the Rimsky-Korsakoff album. Yeah, the slow movements had an excessive glut of crackling, but once the entire orchestra kicked into overdrive that was forgotten. It brought back waves of memories. I don’t think I’ve listened to R-K in years, and his music was one of the early influences on me in the late-90s to make the musical jump back in time. Excellent stuff.

I am well pleased. I have just scratched an itch. And I am developing a nice little ritual of listening to a classical music album every Saturday afternoon once errands are done and lunch is et.

More tomorrow on records …