Pull the vinyl from the sleeve
Drop the needle
Trip the track
Let the stylus ride the black
Hear the crickle and the crack
Filter out the hiss and boom
Scritch the scratch
Let the music
Jump and jive
Feel your body
Shudder and tingle
As the sound hits your brain
At last you come alive
Lynn Hamilton
Wed 2nd Dec 2015 18:06
Enjoyed this Martin. I used to have coppers attached to weigh the arm on mine! Lynn x
Great memories for anyone who grew up with the
mechanical disc players that allowed a person to select
any place on a disc merely by the "human arm to pick-uparm" process.
I was a boy with a step-father who still owned a free-
standing wind-up player with metal needles, who then
bought a small Phillips portable record player (1960) on
the 5/- a week H.P. system to bring up to London
(at age 16) when big city employment beckoned. I've
still got a Pye Black Box/BSR Monarch autochanger
and a more modern little LP/45rpm player despite being
ready to acknowledge and enjoy the much extended
play and audio quality of modern CDs. But you can't pick
your precise spot on these...can you? Nor can you
watch and listen to the whirr of the motor as it lifts
the pick-up and replaces it on its rest. You just can't define or even really explain those simple pleasures.
Play on!
Kaboom! Get in.
Great work Martin. Takes me back to using my big sisters old 'Dansette'... in the days when she would come back and then read my 'horoscope' before getting me grounded by my parents for using it.
Scritch the scratch... sometimes I was that man.
Martin, you have 'come alive' with sound and great imagery to support your ideas. I really enjoyed this. Superb title.
So sorry I missed Sale Waterside in November - a 'big birthday' conflict in the family. I might have arrived, and lasted about an hour - I was that whacked. I judged it better not to go,and seem to be rude. So - we Sale Watersiders have a major problem, don't we? No head honcho! Not good news at all.
J Graham
Wed 2nd Dec 2015 00:52
Great poem expressing your thoughts and emotions.
You took me on a ride to vinyl city.
this is onomatoperfect, a word i have just created for this poem. all the more pleasurable as i read it moments after booting up my old ferguson turntable and pumping out some prokofiev.
This has all the pleasure of a mechanical act with the magic of sound - the demise of a wonderful ritual mercifully brought back to life more recently !
The metre perfectly brings to mind the spinning disc.
Very nice Martin.
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Martin Elder
Thu 3rd Dec 2015 18:52
Thank you all for kind appreciation of this poem. It's amazing what memories are evoked for anybody who might read it. It is also gratifying to know that some of you like me still use such a device. a friend of mine is currently buying as much second hand vinyl as he can in charity shops. I agree with you ray that it is a mechanical act that has all the ritual which is wonderful.
Onomatoperfect seems like a great word to me Stu. the challenge maybe for one of us to use it in a poem!
Glad you like vinyl city J, although I have c.D.'s and still a stack of tapes! Vinyl has got to be the best.
Cynthia, I also missed Sale last month. I do not know what will happen at Sale now John is no longer compering. I guess it's watch this space.
Thanks for your comments.
Daniel, good to hear from you mate. i am sure that I had something akin to dansette when I was knee high to a grasshopper .
Wow M.C. it certainly seems like you have had a long history with Vinyl in it's various guises. I have been blessed with being left a ten inch album of Glenn Miller by my Dad. great music and a great piece of history.
Lynn I also remember balancing coppers on the arm of my old player rather precariously. heady days
Thanks once again everybody.