Turning the tables on big brother (Or why is vinyl best black?)

I like reading newsprint that smudges and dirties your fingers. Perhaps that’s why I’m slightly disappointed that everything has gotten glossier. I find sheen not just a little repulsive, except for something exceptional like the past (i.e. magazines, toys, life), which I’m only too happy to peddle to the inanities and come-ons of pop. But the present must be dirty…and the future always looked great when it was bleak. I know I’m starting to sound sentimental but, hey, we all got our weaknesses and I’m just being honest. Everything’s getting boring anyway. Nothing gets old so fast than the very new.

For sheen, screw the Ice Age, I eagerly await the next Atomic Age being part of mainstream culture again. (Though it’s horrible to admit, the news of the planned opening of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant makes me giddy, though I am sensible enough to know it is the stuff of nightmares.) I like a present obsessed with “all modern conveniences” just as the past seemed to be. I don’t want it to be real, I want it to be shiny. But I digress.

To me, buying and collecting vinyl records satisfies both needs: the fetishistic pull to gaze at yesteryears’ chic detritus and the need to get into the grime of the present and get your hands dirty. Nope I cannot hear that the sound is warmer, I’ll admit that. And I still download way too much music than I can ever possibly listen to. (I even bought a Greatest Hits CD recently—which if mentioned never fails to elicit the horror of the purists and hipsters.) But is there anything more glorious than the gatefold sleeves of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs or the sprawling fantastic landscapes of Yes’ Tales of Topographic Oceans or the bizarre artifact that is Genesis’ Foxtrot? (In contrast, for the latter, what’s even more bizarre is the fact that their drummer, Phil Collins, became a pop star in the 80s —probably a portent of the encroaching banality and charmlessness of Britney Spears singing about the joy of having threesomes — and had a hit with his song, Sussudio). And they gave us wonder just looking at them, divining their secrets, and gave rise to tumescent fantasies. To these eyes, nothing on MTV, MYX or music television in general was sexier or as provocative than that whipped-creamed bride of Herb Alpert, the hedonistic arabesque of Grace Jones or the Vargas illustration of The Cars’ “Candy-O.” (And the music was better.)

Or maybe it’s just the ritual of putting needle to the record and waiting for it to hit that groove, that first note when we become engulfed into something, like let’s say, the opening of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, the spinning of the record like a witches cauldron calling forth that helluva racket. That is the marriage of technology and alchemy, the ghost in the machine. (Not altogether far off — the original title and lyrics of Geezer Butler for the latter was “Walpurgis” after the pagan ritual and featured Dennis Wheatley occult-inspired imagery.) No wonder this machine — the turntable — inspired so much and gave birth to the music journalism of people such as Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Jon Savage and Nik Cohn as much as the music itself. It was the ultimate pleasure appliance (since sex hadn’t been invented yet when they first came out), a modern convenience with all.

It’s been said that in centuries past, before recording equipment and playback systems, an average person could hear his favorite symphonies at the very most twice in their lifetime. Today, music has become a product and, to be fair, there’s nothing really wrong with that. (Hell, most stuff today is so risible that it shouldn’t be called anything but that.) These days, it can be said that even enough is too much. We have too much. It’s actually very telling that we can’t touch an mp3. Perhaps it’s time we go for broke and get back to handling these things with care. Or perhaps get back to listening to music when they’d smear you with their stuff and make it black with experience. Or else, we might as well augur for silence, and truly not only watch Big Brother but really, really love it.