That always caused anxiety. I have dropped it too fast, missed the edge of the record, and hit the song already playing. Not to mention adjusting the weight to keep it tracking, but not damaging the groove. And the sideways force! That always seemed counter-intuitive. Is the needle worn? Is the player’s belt worn? Gad, I’m so happy to not have to deal with that anymore! I think it had to do with the fact I had no choice if I wanted to listen to music. Cassettes came along but the sound quality was never as good.
Maybe vinyl and players are more sophisticated now, but I’m so happy to be rid of them except for transferring music to digital.*
Neat! I always liked albums that had something special about them – like the weird design of the ELP “Brain Salad Surgery” album. Or the double groove on the Monty Python “Matching Tie And Handerchief.” ETA: And the, uh, slightly erotic Roxy Music album, “Country Life,” which was censored in the US, but I must have gotten an import.
*For example, I digitized a bunch of flexible disks that came with Keyboard Magazines in the '80s. Neat stuff from T Lavitz, Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin, and others. So nice to be able to hear them without fiddling with a thin, suboptimal vinyl sheet!
Other than my parents’ record player when I was a little kid, I’ve only had a turntable for the last couple years, so I’m not sure I have anything to compare it to in terms of maintenance and setup, but I’ve not had any issues, so far. I bought a not-quite-the-cheapest unit from a brick-and-mortar store and they did the initial setup for me; I basically just took it home and plugged it in. I’m not much of an audiophile, either, so that might play into my ultimate satisfaction, but I’ve been generally pleased with the hardware.
Yeah, if vinyl was my only, or even my primary, option for listening to music, I’d hate the format. I like the benefits of digital a lot, but I’ve never managed to make it actually work from an IT infrastructure point of view. It’s a classic case of the cobbler’s children going barefoot. CDs seem to hit the sweet spot for me in terms of convenience, durability, and fidelity, but that may just be a function of when I came of age.
That’s another advantage of static, physical media over digital licenses and streaming platforms. If you happen to have a copy of a song or album that becomes controversial and gets banned, no one can take it away from you after the fact. For example, I have an original copy of the first CD by Body Count, which includes a song called “Cop Killer” which, perhaps predictably, resulted in hand-wringing from the first Bush regime et. al., and a Warner Bros. boycott that led to the album being recalled and re-released without that particular track (I think it was replaced with an alternate spoken-word track by Jello Biafra, but I may be misremembering and/or confused).
Nowadays, of course, you can listen to Cop Killer whenever you like on the youtubes, if you’re so inclined, but at the time, it was kind of a non-trivial imposition. If you couldn’t get a copy of the song, you couldn’t hear or play it.
I took a class in Russian classical music where our final was a “needle drop” final where the professor would drop the needle “randomly” on an album and we had to name it. I was pretty pissed after studying so hard to find out he always “dropped” the needle in an easily recognizable section.
It was a great class. Turns out Russians didn’t really have classical music until Peter the Great tried to class the joint up, so it was actually a reasonable period of time to study in a semester. Also, all the Soviet era stuff was the background music to classic cartoons, so you already know a lot of it.
I had bananas going soft on the counter, but right now I also have no AC (STILL BROKEN FROM LAST YEAR WHEN THEY BROKE IT INSTALLING NEW WATER HEATERS sorry but feh).
Toronto is not terrible right now, but “not terrible” in July means “only a light steam bath”. I haven’t turned on so much as a toaster in days.
So rather use up bananas my usual way and make banana bread, I froze them on skewers and then coated them in chocolate. They’ll be a nice cold treat for the next few days.
Depends on your living situation and where you’re painting, but a friend of mine recommended painting in one’s underwear and it is awesome. Paint is way easier to get off skin than clothes.
