Vinyl vs cd and some other thoughts.
Who knows a record shop like Mooncurser Records?
ARTS: Music, please, not machinery
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Financial Times; Jul 13, 2004
Go to a small island at the furthest edge of the Bronx in New York and you will find a second-hand record store that stocks more than 100,000 vinyl records and not a single CD. Called Mooncurser Records, it is a badly lit place, with shelves of LPs receding into gloom at the back of the shop. On the Sunday I visited recently, I was the only browser; it felt somnolent and empty, like a church without worshippers.
The bustling modern world, with its iPods and annoying mobile phone ringtones, seemed very remote. In fact it was as if time had stopped in 1983, when CDs were first sold in the US. A Nick Hornby-ish wave of vinyl nostalgia swept over me at the sight of all those 33s, 45s and 78s, although my enthusiasm drained away when I found they were asking $20 for a second-hand Bryan Adams album.
Mooncurser Records is evidence of how dramatically the way we experience pop music has changed. The transformation is far greater than in any other art form.
If Johannes Gutenberg were to visit a 21st-century bookshop, for instance, he would see that books had not changed that much in 550 years (the threat posed by e-books has proved non-existent). If the Lumière brothers were able to make a ghostly trip to the cinema, they would be astonished by the sound, colour and special effects but would recognise the basic principle of images being projected on a screen.
Imagine Thomas Edison going shopping for music today, however: the inventor of the phonograph would reel from one shock to another. Why have records shrunk to compact discs? How do you download songs from computers? How can thousands of them be stored on a tiny personal stereo? As for a portable telephone that plays the latest Britney Spears single - well, at that stage he would probably need a long lie down.
The danger of grumbling about these new technologies is that you sound like a mildewy old vinyl bore who thinks records are intrinsically superior (which, let's face it, they are). Yet there's a perfectly sound, non-Luddite reason for resenting the attention iPods, ringtones etc are getting: they divert attention from pop's content to its format. Previous generations were defined by music scenes such as punk or acid house; this one is in danger of being defined by a computer file, the MP3.
It does not matter if record companies show as much interest in music as they do in how we listen to it. Last week Bertelsmann announced plans to launch three classes of CDs, cut-price, standard and deluxe. That is fine for successful bands that can afford to put out albums full of enhancements such as videos, but less good news for newcomers who risk being shunted into the cut-price category.
The example of the effect when CDs were launched is cautionary. In the mid-1980s manufactured pop and power ballads plunged pop music into slushy, pompous awfulness. Meanwhile record companies sought to profit by persuading people to rebuy their record collections in the new CD format. New music festered, back catalogues boomed. And is it coincidental that the two genres that have done most towards pop's recuperation since then, hip-hop and dance music, were based around DJs playing vinyl records? Technology transforms the way we consume music, but at what cost?
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd
Who knows a record shop like Mooncurser Records?
ARTS: Music, please, not machinery
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Financial Times; Jul 13, 2004
Go to a small island at the furthest edge of the Bronx in New York and you will find a second-hand record store that stocks more than 100,000 vinyl records and not a single CD. Called Mooncurser Records, it is a badly lit place, with shelves of LPs receding into gloom at the back of the shop. On the Sunday I visited recently, I was the only browser; it felt somnolent and empty, like a church without worshippers.
The bustling modern world, with its iPods and annoying mobile phone ringtones, seemed very remote. In fact it was as if time had stopped in 1983, when CDs were first sold in the US. A Nick Hornby-ish wave of vinyl nostalgia swept over me at the sight of all those 33s, 45s and 78s, although my enthusiasm drained away when I found they were asking $20 for a second-hand Bryan Adams album.
Mooncurser Records is evidence of how dramatically the way we experience pop music has changed. The transformation is far greater than in any other art form.
If Johannes Gutenberg were to visit a 21st-century bookshop, for instance, he would see that books had not changed that much in 550 years (the threat posed by e-books has proved non-existent). If the Lumière brothers were able to make a ghostly trip to the cinema, they would be astonished by the sound, colour and special effects but would recognise the basic principle of images being projected on a screen.
Imagine Thomas Edison going shopping for music today, however: the inventor of the phonograph would reel from one shock to another. Why have records shrunk to compact discs? How do you download songs from computers? How can thousands of them be stored on a tiny personal stereo? As for a portable telephone that plays the latest Britney Spears single - well, at that stage he would probably need a long lie down.
The danger of grumbling about these new technologies is that you sound like a mildewy old vinyl bore who thinks records are intrinsically superior (which, let's face it, they are). Yet there's a perfectly sound, non-Luddite reason for resenting the attention iPods, ringtones etc are getting: they divert attention from pop's content to its format. Previous generations were defined by music scenes such as punk or acid house; this one is in danger of being defined by a computer file, the MP3.
It does not matter if record companies show as much interest in music as they do in how we listen to it. Last week Bertelsmann announced plans to launch three classes of CDs, cut-price, standard and deluxe. That is fine for successful bands that can afford to put out albums full of enhancements such as videos, but less good news for newcomers who risk being shunted into the cut-price category.
The example of the effect when CDs were launched is cautionary. In the mid-1980s manufactured pop and power ballads plunged pop music into slushy, pompous awfulness. Meanwhile record companies sought to profit by persuading people to rebuy their record collections in the new CD format. New music festered, back catalogues boomed. And is it coincidental that the two genres that have done most towards pop's recuperation since then, hip-hop and dance music, were based around DJs playing vinyl records? Technology transforms the way we consume music, but at what cost?
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd
- but I would tend to side with Ian on this one. The way the delivery mechanism of music is changing is far from definitely being a good thing, from the point of view of someone who loves music for its own sake.
