Off The Record

Newcastle Herald

Saturday April 5, 2008

JOANNE McCARTHY

The other day I had one of those blinding moments when you realise the world is passing you by, but you don't give a toss.

I can't even tell you what the name of the technological thingie was that prompted this particular event.

It was little and metallic, had a name made of letters and numbers that sounded like something from Star Wars say, B3QO or X4Z4 and it produced or reproduced or translated or truncated music. Or something.

As I said, I don't know what it actually did, or why it did it, but it kept two young men entertained for about 20 minutes as they extolled its virtues, and it got me to thinking about when I was a girl and televisions were black and white, and sometimes grey and blurry, or blank after 10pm or so when channels closed down telling us it was time for bed.

I jumped up at this point, shook myself down and did something vigorous, to prove I'm not anywhere near geriatric enough to cackle out "the good old days" stories, when I was a girl, to twentysomethings who don't want to hear about drinking warm milk at school or the joys of The Don Lane Show.

I had another blinding moment a few weeks ago, when the flight of the last of my children from home meant a rearrangement of the house and the settling of an issue that's been hanging round for more than 15 years.

How long was I going to keep the last of my LP records in a box in a cupboard before giving them the flick? Until a few weeks ago when I threw the last of them out.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the launch of the "12-inch [30cm] Long Play [LP] 331/3 rpm microgroove record album" by the Columbia Record Company at "a dramatic New York press conference" in 1948, I threw away about a dozen LPs I've faithfully held onto for no other reason than nostalgia, particularly when you consider I haven't even been able to play them since the record player (and don't those two words date you?) died about the same time Bob Hawke was bumped off as PM (1991, and how could you forget?)

There they were, sitting in a box in the back of a cupboard I was clearing out. Their status as nostalgia rather than musical items was obvious because they were laid flat in the box and likely to buckle, rather than standing, and I didn't even care.

Grace Jones and Nightclubbing was on top. There was the stunning angularity of the gorgeous Jones, fag in mouth, staring out at me accusingly, daring me to toss her onto the scrap heap. Which I did.

Yes and 90125 was an easier decision, despite Owner of a Lonely Heart, which I haven't been able to play for years so I really don't know where the pang came from.

There was Steely Dan and Aja, which I have on CD, but I still felt guilty somehow. An era was passing. Even a technodinosaurus like myself, a militant non-computer-loving, barely mobile phone-tolerating, don't-get-me-started on big screen TVs person such as I, had to recognise my personal LP record era is dead.

And in its 60th birthday year, no less.

I could have found them a safe home, I suppose. Somewhere other than the garbage. But there's something sad about seeing LPs lined up at St Vinnies, near the piles of Bryce Courtenays and the half dozen Da Vinci Code copies that are de rigueur for any self-respecting charity shop these days.

I couldn't submit my record collection's elder statesman, the first LP I ever bought Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection to such an end. So I put it in the garbage instead.

It's a relief that there weren't any 78rpms in the box, although I grew up in a family that proudly had some of the old monsters.

It brings tears to my eyes of pain, not poignancy to remember it, but our house would ring to the strained and scratchy sound of Mario Lanza singing The Student Prince, which would drive any children to the park across the road for hours, which is the reason my mother was such a Lanza fan, now that I think of it.

Vinyl is dead, or at least for those of us who are realists and not idealists. And all power to you vinyl-loving, record-hugging, crazy, mixed-up idealists out there, by the way.

A dinosaur salutes you.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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