The Album Report

So I was listening to records this week, as I do every week. Every day, in fact. Yes, I am a nerd, but only in this one sense. Oh, shut up.

I heard a couple that gave me pause. First, there's this recording of Brahms First Symphony. I'm a Brahms guy because he is so rich. He wrote these articulate pieces that have it all, really: beautiful melody as their listening point, clever harmonic support that gets orchestrated in all the right ways, and departures into different spaces that come back to the original theme without losing you. In fact, it all adds up to a truly emotional experience that most composers hit only once in a while.

I hope I don't lose you with music critic talk of "harmonics" and "themes." Let me simplify as best I can so you'll actually get the thing and listen to it. A piece starts off with a melody that tells you what the piece sounds like. (Think Beethoven's 5th and "da da da DAAAAA!!!") It plays around this theme for a while, then skews it a bit in other directions. Then it comes back to the original. With Brahms, these departures are so intelligent you can forget what the original theme was because you're off in other directions of beauty. But when you return, it's like bumping into someone you met the night before and had great fun with, and you pick up where you left off.

Brahms had a real knack for orchestration. The parts that instruments and sections play, and how they all weave together, is very detailed. It allows the musical "voice" of the piece to express itself subtley as well as dynamically. Brahms has so much to hear, whether you're flipping through a magazine or meditating while it plays. I particularly like his chamber music: quartets, quintets and other -tets. These demonstrate his brilliance, because with the smaller number of instruments, you have to be great to pull off the complexity. Brahms was.

Next, I listened to recordings of the teenage Aretha Franklin, singing liturgical music at her father's church in the 1950s. Checker Records released the disc.

The recording isn't first rate because it was not done in the studio. They just set up mikes in church and captured the 14-year-old as she soared through "Precious Lord" and "Yield Not To Temptation" with the choir. It's pretty raw, which is good, and young Aretha welds purity of tone with volume: she positively shakes the walls, but the note is dead center. My fave moment was "While The Blood Runs Warm"—Huge! She is so great.

You have to be into religion or Aretha—or both, of course—to really appreciate this disc. You'll get a better Gospel fix if you watch the Gaither Homecoming shows on TV and you can certainly get better Aretha with her music since 1960. And even 78s have better production quality. But if you like recordings of human beings in their natural habitat, unvarnished and unassuming, and you want to hear what an actual god sounded like when she was—you know—learning the god ropes, this is for you. You don't get many goosebumps, though you will be impressed, but it's just plain cool to experience a Sunday morning in Detroit, 1956, pressed forever within vinyl grooves and available anytime. This record cheats history, kind of—the moment did not pass, it's still happening, whenever the stylus falls and the wax offers up that young girl who lifts us.

My Record Speaks for Itself

I listen to LPs.

This begs 2 primary questions—

What's an LP?

and

In the name of God, Why?

—which I gladly answer.

Never mind the audiophiles who, with raised eyebrow, declare that records sound "warmer" than CDs. (They do.) Never mind that digital stuff from the computer needs Bose products to sound good. (It does.) Sound is important, but only to people who appreciate sound. Everybody else wants the song, no matter how boxy an 8-track sounds, or how hissy cassette decks in Firebirds sound, or how uber-sanitized compact discs sound, or how squashed downloads sound. Now that's a good thing—music, especially pop, is supposed to be about the song. But to the questions: I, my friends, listen to them because they are an art form now understood only by archaeologists.

There was a time, not long ago, when an artist recorded a performance and that recording was made available in the millions. The medium was a vinyl disc with grooves which vibrated a stylus and the resulting impulses were amplified. This was the standard for nearly 50 years. Then in the 90s, digital coding was read by laser and computed through other digital machinery that projected sound waves (not yet digitized). This method was new, hip and compact: the record collection that filled a room now was a CD collection that only filled half a wall. That made plenty of room for that mandatory Kahlo print.

LPs died quickly. Fair enough—change is real and beneficial. And even though album art was lost to the small size of CDs, we've all gotten along fine without it. And stoners found ways to clean the buds...

So now I acquire records in 2nd hand stores or at garage sales. I examine their condition and if in reasonably good shape, I pay the 75¢. After a thorough cleaning, my basic rite is to have a seat, put the disc on the turntable and ... sail away. After about 25 minutes, I have to get up and turn the thing over, but I don't mind. The pops and cracks are appealing as the sound of yesterday. And I'm surprised how well records were cared for over the years. Really trashed LPs are likely in the landfill anyway.

After dinner the other night, we all rolled up our sleeves and got to the cleaning. I put on "Golden Goodies 6", a Roulette Records compilation of Doo Wop. There was precisely one song that we all recognized; every other one was an entirely new experience.

I know you can have the same experience with other forms of recorded music. There are scads of any CD you can imagine available at your favorite music store. But with records, there is that couple seconds after the needle lands percussively on wax, and before the first note sounds. It takes control of everyone for just a moment. It's anticipation of the song, and it's actually part of a record.