Thursday Night Cafe

An Ode to Vinyl
By Peter Webb

Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to playing music at home, vinyl records still rule.

Recently, I had the chance to renew my love affair with the groovy black discs after my CD player went on the fritz. For awhile I played CDs on my computer, until I realized the music of Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and Van Morrison simply is not meant to be squeezed through a pair of candy-bar-sized speakers with little silver buttons.

I needed an alternative.

I had a shelf full of vinyl records, which I’d culled from thrift shops and garage sales during a nostalgic fit sometime around the start of my third decade on earth. Problem was, I couldn’t play them. There they sat, just like my rack of CDs—inert.

(I actually owned a turntable, an old Realistic model I inherited from my brother, but the needle was shot and they stopped making replacements back when the only rapping Eminem did was banging his rattle on his forehead.)

The solution seemed simple: buy a new CD player. Off to the stereo shop I went. As I arrived, three dapper young men approached me wearing name tags and aggressive smiles. Now, I remember a time, not so many years ago, when a CD player was simple to operate. You pushed a button and a little drawer opened. You put the CD in and pushed the button again. The little drawer closed and you pushed “Play.”

Music happened.

The ones now all have rotating carousels or little shifting elevators that hold five or more CDs at a time. You put a CD in and push what you think is the right button, expecting the disc to start. The player has a different idea than you and begins to scramble the disc around noisily, like a robot playing a shell game. Before long your CD is lost, swallowed into a mysterious electronic conundrum as lights blink manically on the front of the player. Finally the shunting stops and music begins, but instead of the disc you wanted it’s the one that got swallowed last month.

“I’d like a normal CD player,” I say to the rigidly-smiling young man whose name tag says “Rob.”

Cheekbones poking through his skin, Rob explains that most people nowadays buy DVD players instead.

“But I want to listen to music, not watch movies.”

He explains that DVD players can handle CDs, too. Provided, that is, the CD isn’t one of those rare ones the player doesn’t like.

“What does the player’s taste in music have to do with anything?”

“It isn’t a case of the player not liking the music,” Rob says, “Its just that, for some reason, some DVD players just do not like certain CDs.”

“Can’t I buy a CD player instead?”

“Sure,” Rob says, grinning like Nosferatu. He shows me several popular models. All of them have multi-disc changers and lots of blinking lights. He demonstrates one of them by pushing some buttons. The disc carousel spins and chatters, clunks and clatters…

Suddenly my eye hits on something surprising. It’s there on a top shelf, high above the DVD players and flat-screen TVs, slim and streamlined like a vintage airplane, dusty as a barn window. Could it be?—Yes, it’s a turntable!

“How much is that?” I say, pointing up toward the shadows.

“That’s a turntable,” Rob says, cheekbones receding.

“Yes, I know. How much is it?”

Rob tells me the price and—guess what?—it’s the cheapest piece of equipment in the store.

“I’ll take it,” I say.

Amused at the Neanderthal in his presence, Rob retrieves a step ladder from the store room, lifts the turntable down from the upper shelf, then brushes the cobwebs from his hair. He boxes it up and rings in my purchase, amusement settling into mild contempt.

I pay the total and leave the store, my brand new turntable tucked beneath my arm like a lamb.

When I get it home I immediately hook it up to the stereo receiver, then select a few records from the shelf. I pull Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night album out of its battered sleeve, squeeze it gently between my palms, and gingerly lower it down onto the turntable. Like a man relearning a religious ritual after years of wandering, I pinch the grip of the audio arm, lift the arm from its cradle, and watch the machine spin to life. Carefully I swing the needle over the edge of the record, then slowly lower it down to the grooves.

Seconds pass as a few pops and scratches spit from the speakers. Then the music starts, just a softly arpeggioed piano at first, followed by a craggy electric guitar and a milky smooth bass. Neil Young’s drugged-out (he really was, according to his dad), nasally voice comes in, singing a half-beat behind the music:

“Too-nigh’s the niiighh… Too-nigh’s the nigh-eye-eye-ite… Too-nigh’s the niiighh… Too-nigh’s the nigh-eye-eye-ite….”

The song continues, the story of a roadie named Bruce Berry who used to borrow Neil’s guitar after a night’s show and sing a song in a voice Neil considered shaky—which must have been pretty damned shaky.

One night Bruce overdosed on heroine, just as Neil’s rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten had done earlier. Both men died, leaving Neil in despair and disillusioned with the music mainstream that had embraced him so eagerly when “Heart of Gold” hit the top of the charts in 1972.

What good is a million dollars, if you can’t save your friends?

I listened to the rest of the song, then took the record off and put on another—Side 2 of CCR’s Willy and the Poor Boys. The first song, “Fortunate Son,” tells the story of a down-and-out boy who goes off to fight in Vietnam, in place of some rich man’s son who gets to stay home and kiss the stars and stripes, convinced he lives in the world’s freest and most democratic nation.

The rich kid eventually grows up to be president, following in his rich dad's footsteps. He starts his own war. But that’s not part of the song.

I play the whole side of the CCR record, which ends with “Effigy,” a lengthy dirge with a vaguely Civil Rights theme. The song was covered two-and-a-half decades later in a louder and intenser version by Uncle Tupelo, whose members went on to form important bands who got dumped by lots of record companies.

I follow the CCR record with a song from the Band’s Northern Lights—Southern Cross album, one of their last and finest. Tucked away on Side 2 is the saddest, most beautiful song Robbie Robertson ever wrote—“It Makes No Difference” (in the past bands didn’t sequence the songs on their albums in descending order of quality, as they do now for the sake of radio play). Singing lead is Rick Danko, the bassist, whose voice probably rivaled Bruce Berry’s for shakiness. Rick Danko from Simcoe, Ontario who in the Band’s farewell concert film, The Last Waltz, is clearly the one who doesn’t want it to end—you see it in his eyes as he sings “It Makes No Difference”:

“And the suuuun won’t shiiine anymooore… And the raiiin falls down on my doooor…”

(Richard and Levon sing harmony. Richard Manuel from Stratford, Ontario who hanged himself two decades later, a few years before Rick died. Levon Helm, the only American in The Band, carries on).

Is there a point to this article? Probably not. Just that some things are worth preserving, and music is worth it more than a lot of things. The best of it is liable to outlast us all.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an LP a CD a DVD or an MP3 that’s playing the music. The point is to listen and, as E.M. Forster once wrote, long before any of the technology, “Only connect.”

For those interested, here’s some places to buy Vinyl LPs in Ottawa:

The Turning Point – Just off Bank St., near Wallack’s art supplies and that bloody grocery store.

Legends – Lincoln Fields Mall (also sells 78, 45 rpm records, etc, some second-hand turntables). These guys are kings.

The shop that used to Be “Spinables” (now under some innocuous name I can't bother looking up) - Rideau St. opposite Waller intersection.

Record Runner, Rideau Street (selected new vinyl by current artists; also better than most for CDs).

Bleeker Audio, Merivale Road and St. Laurent Blvd., sell new turntables at a reasonable price—and no cobwebs or condescention!