Hankerin' after the Old Days....

 

"The way we consume music...."

Even the phrase gets up my nose!  American techie buzzwords all of 'em.  What's wrong with "buy music", or "listen to music", or better yet "enjoy music", for Gawd's sake?

Let me restart this piece......

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Someone forwarded me a meme the other day on Facebook (yes, I KNOW I'm supposed to have dumped the platform, but I'm still finding uses for it - like prompting internet rants of my own....) that kicked my brain into reverse gear.  It was a simple picture of racks of vinyl LPs in a record shop c.1973 I should think, with a "Share if you know what this is" caption.  And, hell, yeah - I know what that is and I go all misty eyed at the memories it conjures up.

I didn't say that, of course, just gave it a Like and moved on.

I love my music, as I've written many times in my various blogging activities, have done since I was a kid.  I admit to not liking much 21st century stuff (unless by established old favourites of mine), and not seeing any value or even talent in rap, or drum 'n' bass, or hip-hop, or KPop or any of the other nonsense that passes for music nowadays, but then what would you expect from an aging hippy?  But I don't "consume" it.  I listen to it, all (or most of) the time - at least when I'm home alone doing my stuff - like this - or out for a hike with my headset on and connected to my Library on my phone.  So pretty much every day, then.

I've been that way since I was a kid, back in the 50s and 60s.  Back then, my mum and dad, neither of them particularly musical but like most people avid listeners to the Light Program on the radio or viewers of the variety shows on the telly and prone to a good old wartime sing-song with their friends at the Men's Club or British Legion after a couple of stouts, and my sister used to listen and argue about the music being played then.  My sister, then in her teens, was part of the first rock 'n' roll generation, loved Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde and The Shadows and Adam Faith and all the other home grown heroes challenging the Americans like Elvis and Bobby Darin and Buddy Holly for air-wave supremacy.  This meant usurping the people my parents preferred - Sinatra, Matt Monroe, Mel Torme and other crooners, and the big bands like Billy Cotton's - not an easy task, since the BBC (then the arbiters of good taste) always favoured the latter over the former.  But as we know, rock 'n' roll triumphed in the end, and big bands gave way to the beat groups that gave way to real musically proficient bands with a huge range of musical styles, that in turn gave way to - ye Gods! - manufactured boy and girl bands squawking away to computer generated backing tracks (or, more likely, miming to them).  

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So, yes, records stores in my youth, indeed right up to my sixties, formed a large part of my life.

Despite my dad's preference to 78 rpm records and my sister's insistence that 45 rpm singles were the only way to listen to music away from the BBC, I was always a 33 rpm album man, myself.  In fact for all the music I've purchased in this long and groovy life, I only ever bought one single - a good 'un though: The Beatles' double-A side Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane (1967).  To me it always made more sense to buy an album and get more than two tracks, sometimes even more than two records.

And some of the covers the things came in were works of art in themselves.  78s and 45s generally came in little paper envelopes with a hole in the middle so that you could read the details of the track on each side from the record label.  Albums had them too, but invariably these were contained in an outer sleeve of cardboard, sometimes laminated for longer life, and here was the real arty stuff.  There would normally be a picture of the band or artist on the front, and track listings/performers/production information on the back, with the album and band title also on the spine of the sleeve.  Then things got prettier, especially when prog rock came along in the late 60s and early 70s, because instead of a single record you often got two and sometimes three with each release, and the album covers of necessity had to be bigger to hold all that plastic.  

With more real-estate to play with, the performers would add all the song lyrics, as well as many more pictures: not only photos of the artist, but pieces commissioned by the bands themselves. Yes were very good at that: they had an artist, Roger Dean, doing most of their album covers (at least after Fragile), and all had similar sci-fi landscapes, vivid colours and the swirly chunky band logo above the album title.  Indeed, Dean himself always insisted that he wasn't a graphic designer at all, but a landscape artist: it was just that his landscapes were alien and not earthly.  

Then came the inclusion of books of lyrics: not content with merely printing the words across the inside of the sleeve, glossy illustrated booklets were included, with pictures to illustrate each individual track lyric (plus who played which instrument) - Elton John's Goodbye  Yellow Brick Road and The Who's pretentious (but brilliant) "rock opera" Tommy are classic examples of the songbook multi-sleeved packaging.  

So I would trundle off to my local record store weekly, to see what was in stock, and maybe pick up another gem or two.  This would be assisted by a flourishing music press - Melody Maker and New Musical Express were the go-to titles for any discerning music fan: each ran to maybe 30 pages (not including regular supplements featuring the best drummers, the best guitarists and so on) packed with concert and record reviews, news stories (who's leaving who, who's replacing him, and the like) and fascinating interviews with the biggest names in the business.  They did everything the later glossies like Q and Mojo did, only better.

Record stores helped by having racks devoted to different types of music, sub-divided by artist, in the bigger stores spread over a couple of floors - like the wonderful Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus or HMV in Oxford Street (I spent hours in both).  But whichever store I went to, even the little one on the High Street in my home town that sold all kinds of other stuff (records very much a sideline) I spent hours just rifling through the sleeves looking for something, anything to buy.  As well as the recommendations from MM and NME or new releases by favorites like Elton John or the Faces or Cream  I'd often buy based solely on the album cover.

Ahead Rings Out by an obscure and short lived band called Blodwyn Pig is a good example: the music was bog-standard guitar driven bluesy rock but the cover, blue, with a big severed pig's head dressed in a leather flying helmet and shades, a smouldering fag sticking out of its mouth, was a classic. Similarly I bought Jethro Tull's Stand Up!, that had on its cover a woodcut of the band sitting in a woodland setting, with charismatic flautist and singer Ian Anderson crossing his hands over his knees.  I thought it was great and bought it on the strength of the cover (the music turned out to be superb too).  When I got it home I dutifully studied the cover as I listened to the music and noticed that one of Anderson's hands had an extra finger but put it down to carelessness (as it was).  Years later, long after I'd sold the album for a couple of quid to fund a night at the pub, I read somewhere that there had only been a couple of hundred pressings with the mistake and one in mint condition was now worth several hundred pounds at auction.  I could have cried......

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 Then came tapes, specifically cassettes and cartridges.  They gave you the option of taking your own music on the move - transistor radios had been doing that but locked you into what the BBC or the pirates (and latterly commercial stations) were playing - but these new developments opened up a whole new way of consumption (I know! Sorry....).

With cassettes you could carry several in your pocket, and if you had a decent player at home could record other cassettes and radio shows of your choice on them.  The problem was playing them on the move.  I had a portable player, complete with faux-leather carrying case, about the size of a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that ran on both mains electricity and batteries.  The batteries were big chunky things, and four of them, depending on use, could last a couple of days if you were lucky.  Lugging it around just so that you could listen, without earphones, to say Disraelli Gears on the bus was a pain in the arse, not least because it disturbed the other passengers.  It got better when cassette players became standard on car radios (assuming of course you had a car).  

Cartridges were bigger and had the advantage that, at least until double-play cassettes appeared, you didn't have to turn the thing over half way through the songs to play side two: it was one continuous loop.  Of course, that had its own problems, in that once it had finished you had to take it out of your player if you didn't want to hear it all over again.  The things were also a good half a dozen times the size of cassettes (Gideon bibles are smaller), and I never saw a proper mobile player (except in cars and, once, my mate Tel's lorry).  No surprise cartridges weren't as popular and died out quite quickly except for niche and geeky users.

There was another issue that plagued both formats - that of un-spooling.  This happened with monotonous regularity: unless you diligently employed a tape-head cleaner on your machine it had a habit of suddenly locking up for a second because of dust or breadcrumbs or something getting into the works.  The machine of course carried on playing, so in another few seconds most of the flimsy tape had been unreeled and twisted and probably ruined.  You had to catch it quickly and switch off - not always possible - , carefully remove the tape without breaking it, then slowly and even more carefully re-wind it manually over the tape heads (inserting an HB pencil into the hole helped in this respect). Even the best tapes could only take this a few times, the cheap ones from Woolworth's lasted no more than twice.  And if it was a proper tape, bought instead of vinyl, complete with sleeve notes and stuff that you needed a magnifying glass to read (but 10 our of 10 to the record companies who at least tried to recreate the vinyl packaging ) you were stuffed: you had to buy a new copy all over again.  It happened to me with Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells - I bought it for about £1-50 in old money, and my monster tape player irreparably chewed it to bits on the third play the evening I bought it.  I replaced it the next day, and several hundred plays later I still have it somewhere.

The good old Sony Walkman, when it was invented, made a lot of difference in that is was not much bigger than a cigarette packet so fit nicely into a pocket, and came with headphones (flimsy with crap sound quality admittedly) that made genuine personal music on the move a reality.  It didn't stop tape-chewing antics though....

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Then came the Compact Disc, or CD for short.  It came as a best of both worlds mix of vinyl and tapes: big enough and technically advanced enough to hold a lot of music, on a near indestructible disc of some unspecified material that looked like shiny metal but was light enough to be plastic, but still small enough to put in your jacket pocket.  The size meant that the plastic case was big enough for record companies to be able to recreate the more complex artwork and lyric books, and in a clear and readable format, too.  

Before long, CDs were outselling every other form of distribution, killing off the cartridge, severely damaging cassette sales and reducing vinyl to the real enthusiasts with complex and expensive hi-fi systems with built in radios, turntables, tape decks, even CD's, and a selection of speakers that, according to manufacturers, accurately "reproduced the concert experience".  

Then along came the Discman from Sony, a means of playing your CDs on the move like the cassettes on your Walkman, generally through better quality headphones, and your music on the move experience jumped up another notch.

Again, this was not without issues.  The CDs could scratch just as easily as vinyl, as anyone who put a coffee cup or beer glass down on one accidentally can testify, and like a scratch on vinyl or a mangled cassette this could ruin the thing completely - and CDs were a lot more expensive to replace.  Even a small scratch could cause an irritating skip in the music when you were listening, maybe only a couple of notes, but often enough to ruin your listening.  Walking with it playing could also cause skipping - in fact I knew someone who fitted some kind of holder to the dashboard of her car so that she could listen while driving and it skipped even worse - no idea how the combined CD/radio units fitted by car manufacturers prevents this, but it does.

When I moved to Poland I spent a lot of time and money replacing many of my old vinyl records sold over the years or abandoned when I left England with CDs, since the music centre that came with my rented apartment lacked a turntable, and besides I could play and copy the CDs via the hard drive on my laptop, to give me another alternative to consume (that term again....).  Still later, when smart phones were invented, I was able to copy it all from the laptop to an SD card to give me over a weeks' worth of music, including downloads that are these days merrily killing every other option, to listen to through decent Bluetooth headsets, and I have true music on the move.

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But none of these options can beat the live concert experience when it comes to enjoying music, and I've been fortunate to attend many gigs over the years.  Some have been small, intimate affairs in my local pub: when I was still at school my cousin spent some time as a singer in folk group in our home town, and they started a folk club that held concerts in a hall attached to one of the pubs in the High Street.  I used to go every other week, and enjoyed many acts, known and unknown, while getting slightly pie-eyed on the real ale served over the bar.  The highlight was an appearance by the Strawbs, just becoming well known and about to recruit keyboard genius Rick Wakeman and turn electric, but the three guys in the band then played a stunning accoustic set, that in my view surpassed anything they've done subsequently, to a packed room.  Their standing ovation was fully deserved.

Slightly bigger concerts I enjoyed were at a larger concert hall in Tunbridge Wells, and included a funky band called Kokomo (essentially, Joe Cocker's Grease Band, after he split and went solo plus a terrific girl vocalist called Diane Birch) and another with former Faces bassist Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance, shortly before he was struck down by the multiple sclerosis that ended his career and, ultimately his life. Admission to both was I think a pound on the door, and they were great fun.

At Fairfield Halls, Croydon, I watched a superb gig by Supertramp, hitting their peak with the classic Crime of the Century album and supported by Joan Armatrading just before she broke into the big time - another couple of quid well spent (ticket prices were unbelievably good value in the early 70s).  I also went with some work pals to the same place for a concert featuring a top-line prog rock band called Barclay James Harvest.  One of our group was a BJH fanatic and booked the tickets - front row, centre, and spent the entire gig in a state of tearful ecstasy.  I fell asleep.

But pride of place goes to a concert by The Who (one of my all-time favourite bands) at Charlton Athletic's Valley stadium (before it was re-built).  They were supported by Roger Chapman's Steetwalkers, Little Feat and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band (the Next Big Thing at the time).  It poured with rain, there was a mass brawl in front of the stage during Harvey's set (about 20 feet from where me and my mate were standing - never seen to much blood!) as the band played on.  But The Who were magnificent, and it was a fiver - yes, £5! - well spent.  The day had absolutely everything, including the best light show I ever saw, with lasers being bounced off huge mirrors mounted halfway up the four floodlight pylons.  You could see that all across London, apparently..

Running that a close second was Wembley stadium, another five pound gig, with a line up of Stackridge, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Joe Walsh, the Eagles (in their Hotel California pomp), the legendary Beach Boys and topping the bill, Elton John. It was a July day, hot and sunny, and our tickets were at the far end of stadium from the stage: the acts looked like insects.  So along with maybe 50 other people, we hopped over the wall, raced past a security detail caught by surprise and onto the pitch, where we worked our way through the crowd and closer to the stage.  Our enjoyment of the gig improved as a result, but the resulting sunburn and nor being able to go for a pee for about 8 hours (despite the six-packs of beer we got through) because our tickets weren't valid, kind of spoiled the day.  Fantastic music though.

Honourable mentions go to Billy Joel at the old Wembley Empire Pool, promoting his River of Dreams album and including most of his best stuff right back to his debut Piano Man,  and the one and only Boss - Bruce Springsteen and the classic E Street Band line up at the Kensington Olympia - thirty odd thousand fans crammed in, on their feet  and singing Born To Run along with Springsteen brings a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye even as I write this.  Magical moment towards the end of a good three and a half hours of great music.  Oh and I can't ignore U2 at Katowice in Poland, on The Edge's birthday - a crowd of maybe forty thousand Poles singing (badly) " 'appy Birsday to you" was cool too.