Your Cart is empty
Subtotal£0.00
Your order details
What do you think of scratches on records? I ask because I was playing Renaissance's excellent live album, recorded, remarkably enough, at Carnegie Hall, complete with a superb 23 minute ‘Ashes Are Burning’ of which the first minutes of my record is full of clicks, crackles and pops before it settles into playing cleanly. It occurred to me that such noises were behind the advent of the click-free (but soulless in my view) CD, but I’ve never been bothered by them, oddly enough, but they must’ve been a serious agitation for many.
I have always thought of needle noise as just part of the rock n roll experience and still do. I’m amazed music is available on records at all and don’t feel it's fair to criticise the format’s weaknesses. Although I have CDs, the silence they offer doesn't improve the experience for me. Obviously there are limits to this.
I have records that skip and are all but unplayable. So I try to get good clean records, but if they have a scratch or a click or two, I don’t worry, in fact I embrace the rustles and clicks in a second-hand record. They are the equivalent of lines on your face; a sign of time passing and of a life lived, in this case the Renaissance album was, in November 1978, owned by someone called Anne Holmes, who has written her name on the sleeve, but sadly not her address.
It’s 48 years old as a record, in what universe would time not have left its ravages? It’s amazing it’s here at all. I feel that even more keenly for records from the sixties that are 55-60 years old. What amazing artefacts, still here, giving pleasure, after witnessing so much life and going through good times and bad. It seems organic to me, not a mere entertainment product but something greater; an artform that tells us about life, the passing of time and the mortality of all flesh. I may be thinking too much about this, I don’t think so.
I have always thought of needle noise as just part of the rock n roll experience and still do. I’m amazed music is available on records at all and don’t feel it's fair to criticise the format’s weaknesses. Although I have CDs, the silence they offer doesn't improve the experience for me. Obviously there are limits to this.
I have records that skip and are all but unplayable. So I try to get good clean records, but if they have a scratch or a click or two, I don’t worry, in fact I embrace the rustles and clicks in a second-hand record. They are the equivalent of lines on your face; a sign of time passing and of a life lived, in this case the Renaissance album was, in November 1978, owned by someone called Anne Holmes, who has written her name on the sleeve, but sadly not her address.
It’s 48 years old as a record, in what universe would time not have left its ravages? It’s amazing it’s here at all. I feel that even more keenly for records from the sixties that are 55-60 years old. What amazing artefacts, still here, giving pleasure, after witnessing so much life and going through good times and bad. It seems organic to me, not a mere entertainment product but something greater; an artform that tells us about life, the passing of time and the mortality of all flesh. I may be thinking too much about this, I don’t think so.
