I hadn’t been expecting that I would post today – two posts in successive days isn’t my usual pattern, after all – but, yet again, the excellent Timehop has reminded me of the anniversary of a post. As many of you weren’t following my blog when I posted this five years ago today, you probably won’t have seen this one before. For me, it is a nice little piece of nostalgia, which I think many will relate to – the way we listen to music has changed so much during my lifetime. The piece also helps to explain my love of music, how it developed, and is background for those of you newer to my blog who may have wondered what I’m doing. Don’t worry, I often ask myself that too! From 2016, this is:
THE LISTENING BOOTH
Looking back over how our lives have altered since the long gone days of youth, one of the things that has changed a huge amount is how we consume music. I’ll admit to having a subscription to Apple Music, as it is just so easy and convenient, but I do miss the joy of a proper record shop.
I first started getting into music in the early 1960s, just before the Beatles rewrote everything. I can remember the days of listening at lunchtime to the old BBC Light Programme, I think it was called Workers Playtime. My sister and I used to keep our fingers crossed that the one pop song in an hour long show was one that we liked. Then came Radio Luxembourg and the pirate stations, which I used to listen to on a little transistor radio – remember them? – until the then Labour Government closed down the pirates and the BBC restructured to cater for a mass audience, with the new Radio 1 and the Light Programme becoming Radio 2. Over the years I’ve gone away from Radio 1 to Radio 2, which caters for old duffers like me! But there is only so much that radio can give you. It’s much better to have your own collection of music, that you can dip into whenever you want, and find something to suit every mood.
That is where the humble record player came in. My parents were a little late coming to that party, but they eventually did get one and my lifelong love of building my record collection began. Like most of us, I guess, I can still remember the first record I ever bought: Eve Of Destruction, by Barry McGuire. I must have had rebel tendencies back then! But, to be fair, the song was a massive number one hit. Not bad for a guy who started in the New Christy Minstrels, singing about the wheels coming off his wagon! ‘Buying a record’ is a phrase largely unknown to modern day youth, who are far more in tune with downloads and streaming, and are as a result missing out on the sheer joy of owning the physical product. I used to buy my records either from a secondhand stall in the local covered market, which had a vast selection of ex-jukebox 7 inch singles, or in a specialist record shop. You could actually go into a shop, browse through the racks, and then take your choice to the assistant and ask ‘can I listen to this please?’ Remember the listening booths? If I mention these to my daughters – who are 30 and 24 – they look at me very strangely. But that is how we decided whether to buy. I spent many happy hours – not all at the same time! – sitting in a little booth, wearing headphones and listening to new records for the first time. The ubiquity of streaming services which enable you to listen to anything you want just didn’t exist back then. And the beauty of it was that it had a social aspect to it. Being in a record shop with your friends and taking it in turn to choose was so much fun. And there was always the chance of meeting someone new and bonding over a shared musical taste. Sitting at home with the computer just doesn’t do that for you! Once you had made your choice, you left the shop with a piece of vinyl in a cardboard sleeve, and rushed home to play it. Well, I did, anyway! Singles didn’t really have much packaging, but the sleeves for long players became ever more creative, depending on the promotional budget that the record company allocated to its artists. And once the idea of the gatefold sleeve was invented, there was even more space for the creative geniuses to work with. I always liked having the words to sing along to, and sometimes these came on an insert so as not to take up cover space. Many of these are now held to be design classics. The Beatles sleeve for the Sgt Pepper album, for example. Or the Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers – yes, the zipper really works! One of the best, for me, was the sleeve for Jethro Tull’s concept album Thick As A Brick, which opened out into the format of a local newspaper, complete with ridiculously silly parody news and horoscopes. That just didn’t work in CD format!
But vinyl records had their drawbacks. They were very easy to damage, either by scratching them with the stylus when you were trying to find a particular track on an album, or by leaving them around to gather dust, warp in the sunshine or be chewed by the dog (guilty on all counts!). They were heavy to move around in any volume – they became an extra piece of luggage to take to university! – and they took up so much room. So gradually they fell out of favour. After vinyl there was the cassette tape. It was small, light and the player was more robust than the old record player. But unless you had a digital counter on your cassette player it was a nightmare to find a particular track on an album. And if you’ve ever had one come unspooled whilst in the player you’ll know their major drawback – remember the days of carefully extracting them so as not to break the tape, and then rewinding it with a pencil? Happy days, or maybe not! The cassette did, however, give rise to the first real attempt at taking your music with you to listen anywhere, with the Sony Walkman and all the various competitors. A bit like an iPod, as long as you had a box to carry all your cassettes with you. Then they invented the CD, the Compact Disc. Remember when these first started? All those promises that they were indestructible, that you could smear them with jam and they would still play? Really? I still have no idea why anyone would want to do that, and have never tried it. A waste of jam, if you ask me.
Over 50 years I’ve amassed a huge collection in all three formats. The vinyls and cassettes are still at my ex-wife’s home, and we’re talking about ways to sell them off. It feels a bit like destroying my past but, sadly, I don’t have enough space for them, and don’t own anything to play them on anyway. I’m not a hi-fi buff – one of those who swears that music sounds best on vinyl – and I’ve been seduced by the ease of digital music. I know, I’m a philistine and a hypocrite, but hey – what else can I do! Even if I had the room for a large vinyl collection and owned a record player, it has become very much a niche market these days, and those albums which are released on vinyl are often gimmicky – coloured vinyl, anyone? – and cost twice as much as the equivalent CD. When you compare that with the streaming services, these are just so cheap that actually buying a physical product can’t really compete any more. As I said, I use Apple Music, which costs the equivalent of one CD per month. For that, I now have a library of over 4,000 albums available at the tap of a screen, via my computer or even through my TV, to which I’ve attached a rather good sound-box! The industry is trying to recreate the market for vinyls, with such initiatives as the annual Record Store Day – which my good blogging friend Michael wrote so well about recently in this post. Like me, he remembers the joys of the record shop – however, unlike me, he can at least go to one: there isn’t anywhere selling proper records for miles around here!
As I write this, I’m listening to the new Oysterband album, released today – and I haven’t had to go anywhere to get it. They are one of my favourite bands and it’s great to be able to hear the new album straightaway. But I do feel I’m missing something. And I don’t think I’m alone:
That was where I ended the original post. I should add a footnote to correct a minor error of memory in it, though: despite my recollection, Eve Of Destruction only reached #3 in the UK charts, though it got to #1 in the US. I could try to claim that I was recalling the American charts, but would you believe me? Thought not…
A further footnote: for American readers, I feel I should point out that the reference in the post to ‘jam’ was, of course, to what you guys for some inexplicable reason call ‘jelly’ – for us that is something completely different, as Mr Python would say.
A final footnote is that I didn’t explain what that last image was. For those of you not familiar with the excellent Marc Cohn, that was the sleeve to an album he released in 2010 celebrating the records he was listening to back in 1970, when he was 11. On this album he covers twelve songs by the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Van Morrison, among others. This is typical of the laid back approach he took to the songs of his (and my) youth:
Rather different from the Cat Stevens original, or the best known cover version – by Jimmy Cliff – but the style is ideal for Marc’s soulful voice: I love it!
I chose to re-post this piece as, reading it again earlier, it brought back waves of nostalgia for my younger days, and for ways in which we had a lot of musical fun that modern day kids probably don’t get, and wouldn’t understand. I hope it brings back similar memories for you.
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When I was a little girl I used to listen to my mom’s records on her old record player. She mainly had Broadway records so I learned the songs to the likes of My Fair lady, Cabaret, and Fiddler on the Roof. I still love this music and I still have my mom’s records.
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My parents liked those too, and we had several show albums. All of those, plus the likes of Oliver and Sound of Music. For me, they were ok but I preferred my own music. You’ve done well to keep those records – I don’t even have my own now!
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I am a bit of a collector and I also have the two records you have mentioned.
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My younger son had a spell being a DJ earlier this century and vinyl was the choice,. My parents managed to never own a record player so I never became a collector. At one stage Dad acquired a huge reel to reel tape recorder which was fun in its own right and my friend and I recorded our pop music programmes and did ‘go go dancing’ in the living room – must have driven my parens mad.
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I can see why vinyl would have been good for a DJ. It is enjoying quite a resurgence but the prices are ridiculous! I’m sure your parents enjoyed your dancing really…
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Ahhhhh memories we gave all of our treasured vinyl to our daughter when we moved here ..those were the days in so many ways…:) x
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They were, for me too. My vinyls went after our divorce, but I wouldn’t have room for them now anyway! 😊 x
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That is the thing they take up so much room 🙂 x
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Hi Clive. Great post. I am still juggling with vinyl, CDs, downloads and streaming. I kept a few cassettes which have special meaning but I have nothing to play them on. Apparently there has been a revival in cassettes – a 103% increase in sales in 2020. Not sure who’s buying them though. Ah, listening booths…. they were a magical part of the record buying experience for me. It was even better if you could get the sales assistant to play your new release request over the store megaspeakers.
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Hi Paul. Many thanks, glad you liked it. I have a few cassettes but the only player I have is battery hungry so I don’t bother with it. Vinyls have long since been disposed of. I was looking at last year’s sales figures earlier – that cassette revival is a doubling of a very small number. Vinyl now accounts for 40% of physical sales, but the market is dominated by streaming and downloads – over £1.2bn of a total of £1.5bn. I mentioned in another comment about getting a choice played over the shop’s system. It always felt like a win!
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Vinyl is definitely making a comeback in the United States. Are you experiencing that at all, Clive?
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I mentioned it in the original piece, Pete, and it has taken off a lot in the intervening five years. I read somewhere that sales had increased dramatically, though still a relatively small part of what we spend on music. Sales of all physical media have taken a big hit thanks to streaming, though.
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wonderful post, Clive. I went through many of the stages you write about, although I can’t seem to recall listening booths. I do remember having lots of headphones hooked up in stores that would enable you to listen to music. I agree that record albums offered a great opportunity for the artists to add to the value of the record with artwork and the lyrics. I also agree that it is hard to beat the cost and convenience of services like Spotify, and I really can’t tell the difference between formats.
and peanut butter and jam is just as good to me as peanut butter and jelly 🙂
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Thanks, Jim. The booths we had involved headphones enclosed in a canopy like public phones used to have. One shop I frequented had a little room big enough for two people, which was fun. Some of the sleeves for vinyl albums were very clever, that Jethro Tull one being the best from my collection. I’ll admit to choosing the ease of streaming too, even though I still have a large CD collection and a nice little player for them. The Echo tends to be the first port of call though.
If you put what we call jelly into a sandwich it would all explode out of the sides at the first bite. It would make a mess of a CD too 😉
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I tend to listen to music using my iPhone with a set of wirelsss headphones on…
so jam and CDs are ok together, but not jelly and CDs? 🙂
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I wouldn’t recommend either, not that I’ve tried 😂
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like I said, I do not have a very discerning ear… 🙂
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I think you might notice a difference, even so. And all that gunk inside your CD player might not help things, either… 😮🥮
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I don’t think I’ve listened to a cd for years… 🙂
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I’ve listened to one since I moved flats two years ago – bought directly from an indie band who run their own record label, and don’t feature much on iTunes. Other than that, I stream (in the nicest possible way)…
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you gotta love the effort by indie bands to do whatever they can to make a go of it…
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A bit like indie authors, I guess, though they have the logistics of the physical product to contend with. A lot of hard work!
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and I’m sure many of those indie bands would love to be a one-hit wonder…
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I bet they would, but for most it’s the impossible dream, isn’t it.
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for many of them, that’s why they do it…
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That eternal hope keeping them going. It’s kind of admirable and sad at the same time.
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and hopefully it inspires them to produce great music…
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Some more than others…
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👍
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I also remember the listening booths, and how there was always a queue for them. I signed up to Apple Music recently and it’s great, but my phone keeps telling me to buy more data, lol.
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They were great fun, weren’t they. Our local record shop would play your music choice over the main speakers if business was slow, in the hope of attracting customers. I’ve used Apple Music since it started, but I have unlimited broadband at home and a large mobile data allowance so don’t have your problem 😊
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Love the Marc Cohn version of this great song.
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It’s good, isn’t it. His style worked well with it.
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