Lowering the stylus into the groove needed to be done carefully says Wyn Drabble. Photo / NZME
Lowering the stylus into the groove needed to be done carefully says Wyn Drabble. Photo / NZME
I'm gazing at our extensive CD collection as I write this and I'm seeing it as yet another remnant of progress.
Yes, Spotify and the like have made CDs redundant - just like the cassette tapes before that and the vinyl records before that.
For much of personkind's history, ofcourse, there was no recorded music. If they wanted to hear music, early man and early woman had to make their own. There was a lot of humming.
And if they went to a live gig there were further problems because amplification had also not been invented. Early times were tough.
Then in 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and recorded music was born. Granted, there were earlier successful attempts to record sounds but they were unable to be played back, a function more or less demanded by modern listeners.
Apart from radio – we had a big steam wireless which family would sit around and listen to – my first experience with recorded music was a 45rpm single, Sloop John B, by the Beach Boys. It was the only single we had (it wasn't called a single for nothing).
My brother and I would have saved up for it and we played it over and over and over again without ever tiring of it. It provided a much-needed break from the rigours of stamp collecting.
Wyn Drabble. Photo / Warren Buckland
We also liked seeing how loud we could get it to play and once tested how far down our street we could go and still hear it (to the corner IGA store).
I soon became more sophisticated and bought LPs. My first four albums were by John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Louis Armstrong.
The Armstrong album was Ambassador Satch and featured live recordings of Satchmo and his band on tour in Europe in 1955. I loved it and still do; it's on my current Spotify playlist.
Vinyl records required looking after and I feel that was something I was not good at. Lowering the stylus into the groove needed to be done carefully and carelessness resulted in scratches and jumps. I listened to a lot of scratches and jumps in my time but many people still swear by vinyl.
No stylus lowering was needed for the newer cassette tape but with its arrival came the new problem of tangling. I have spent many hours of my life trying to rewind unravelled tape using a biro or similar to twirl the little cog/hole arrangement.
It was tiresome work matched only by the festive task of untangling Christmas tree lights, many of which are sold pre-tangled.
To our rescue came compact discs. These enabled us to spend way more money replacing all our cassette tapes – which we bought to replace our vinyl – so we could still play our favourite music on the systems currently available.
Now they too are largely defunct but I do get the opportunity to pay for them yet again through Spotify.
Very early on I had to upgrade because I was driving to work and listening to my Spotify choice when, horror of horrors, ads started coming on. Between songs! Naturally, I phoned my provider to express my concern and they told me that I could, by paying more, have Spotify Premium which is ad-free.
In my car it operates on Bluetooth or something but please don't ask me to explain how that works. It probably involves some sort of waves or interplanetary corpuscles or something.
Within my remaining life, there will certainly be another quantum change. I can't imagine what it will be but I feel confident that I will be able to pay for my favourite albums a fifth time!
Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, a musician and public speaker.
