Vinyl virtues

Apparently the coming thing is DAT - Digital Audio Tape, which will kill off compact discs, the present coming thing.  I can't say I care much.  For me there is only one medium for storing music: the 12 in. LP.

This is not through any neo-Luddism.  Few love technology as much as I do.  A strong argument could be made for regarding technology as the dominant intellectual endeavour of our era, over all artistic activities which once represented the cream of our civilisation.  It is simply a case of irrational gut reaction.

What could be more improbable than the LP?  A piece of black plastic, flexible, fragile?  And the method of recording? - a groove whose walls wiggle for some 2000' of a single spiral.  It is so primitive it attains the kind of grandeur found in attempts to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen, or to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a reconstructed coracle. 

Perhaps it is something akin to tenderness: the medium seems to be vulnerable, and its offering such an achievement in the face of almost insuperable obstacles.  In fact it is a miracle that the level of sound reproduction can be so high; it says much for the associated machinery as well as the surprisingly resilient nature of this medium.

Perhaps I am also attracted by the physicality of the LP. There is nothing quite like it in shape: perfectly round, thin, black and elegant - the ultimate after-dinner mint. Handling them, gingerly, reverently, you have a sense that this is a special object.  Somehow it seems to speak of civilisation, the denial of petty difficulties by human ingenuity.  In comparison compact discs are footling things, poor little slivers, without mass or solidity.  As for the mundane practicality of tape…

En masse, LPs gain even more in grandeur.  Serried ranks of their slim forms speak eloquently of the sense of collection.  Their shape means that they can be stored very efficiently; it is possible to have hundreds, thousands even, placed side by side to give a kind of massive, grouped effect.  Possessing them, you feel that you really have the music they contain in a very literal way. 

On second thoughts, perhaps I welcome the latest round of technical innovation.  At the moment, the LP is king; vast quantities of music are available on them.  Soon, however, it will be merely a quaint curiosity, a collector's item requiring specialised equipment like the 78.  At the moment the universe of LPs is still expanding, indeed the choice is almost embarrassing as record companies dig ever-deeper into repertoires to find unrecorded works.  Soon this will be a thing of the past as the new technology begins to colonise the old territories anew.

As we are put back at square one in some respects, with a smaller range offered in glorious, garish technicolour, so the old LPs will acquire a new-found worth.  As their rarefied contents become more and more prized in comparison to the faded favourites on compact discs and digital tape, so the world will come, like me, to love the LP.

(25.9.86)

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