Entertainment For Lively Minds
The forgotten beauty of the fortuitous vinyl-jump
I've just read a posting by Andrew F about vinyl volatility in the "CD Vs LP" survey that's currently heading the homepage, and it reminded me of some of the more interesting jumps that my records made when I were a lad.
My copy of "Return To Sender" on Elvis' 40 Greatest used to go:
"I gave a letter to the postman,
he put it his sack -
- my letter back. ",
and my copy of "Rocky Raccoon" on The White Album used to go:
"So one day he walked in to town
And booked hims -
- oon".
Both of which somehow improve on the original in ways that no remasterologist could ever anticipate, and even now I still feel blindsided and even slighly cheated when I hear the authorised versions.
I know this is probably the most tenuous posting in the history of postings, but am I alone here?
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Perfect Skin by Lloyd Cole & the Commotions
You are not alone. My 7" single version of this ended with a scratch that made the ending of "...moral of this song is that there never has been one" an interesting time signature change, jumping from "never" to "one". I seemed right at the time. [I realise that this is quite possibly the dullest post I have committed to text...]
Not the same but similar
How do you play a CD at a faster speed? I used to love speeding up tracks. Free's Alright Now and The Bonzo's Tubas In The Moonlight were fab at a higher rpm. I once recorded Terry Riley's Rainbow In Curved Air LP onto cassette at 45rpm by accident and preferred it that way to the correct speed.
Sorry. As you were.
Blimey, no...
...don't let me stop you. "Handling The Big Jets", which was the B side of "Sound Of The Suburbs" by The Members used to sound FANTASTIC on 78.
I also transferred "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" to cassette when my batteries were on the way out, which meant that the end used to get gradually both faster and quieter until it ground to a halt.
Records skipping backwards would drive me insane
when they endlessly repeated the same bit. With one exception. I found it very amusing to hear my vinyl copy of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down on Me" which went...
"Don't discard me, don't discard me, don't discard me" repeated for ever.
Did I discard it? You bet I did.
My dad's car tapes.
My dad taped a lot of his vinyl for use in the car.
I can still to this day remember where both the Marcel's Blue Moon and Perry Como's Magic Moments stuck - both taped from a compilation album that some friends had borrowed and damaged.
Then there was the country tape that snapped. My dad managed to salvage it after some effort with splicing tape, but had to insert a short section of tape from elsewhere to cover up the snap. This was taken from an old C90 onto which he'd taped several episodes of Jimmy Savile's Double Top Ten show. So there was always one Don Williams song that suddenly acquired a second or two of Helen Shapiro in the middle.
Deep Purple In Rock
The first time I ever heard this I thought the screaming bit in Child in Time was going on a bit until I realised the needle was stuck. The jump was almost seamless though, which made it difficult to spot.
Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
My copy of RamonesMania (the compilation) jumped ain the first line of Sheena Is A Punk Rocker (I seem to remember it went: 'Well the kids are all ... ready to go ... to go now').
Got a copy of Road To Ruin, and it jumped in almost the exact same place.
Listened to it it like that for years - I thought that was how it went.
Then I got a CD version about 5/6 years later, and finally heard the whole of the first line.
Had loads of records that jumped/stuck - the joy of buying second-hand (and cheap).
Sometimes skips and jumps could be counteracted by the addition of a 1p or 2p atop of the stylus arm, gently pushing the arm or swapping your duff copy with your mates that played fine.
Also found that a change of equipment helped.
Some of those that jumped on the old Panasonic turntable I had were absolutely fine when I upgraded to a Kenwood
Similar thing with a tape...
...I couldn't squeeze all of "Ziggy Stardust..." onto a C90 so "Rock and Roll Suicide" would always end with "Oh no, love, you're not alone" which I found to be quite thrilling. I was rather surprised the first time I heard the rest of the coda, and it sounded 'wrong' for years.
Similarly my taped copy of "In the Flesh" on "The Wall" repeated "there's one smoking a joint" which made it sound even more deranged.
Vinyl copy...
....of Aladdin Sane jumped during 'Time'. The CD has never sounded right to me.
Rock n' Roll with me
on "Diamond Dogs" jumped at the line "while tens of thousands found me in demand" to sound like "While towme in demand" The odd thing was my mates copy jumped at exactly the same spot. I blame that bloody RCA using sub standard vinyl. Or it could have been my crappy Binatone record player. Heard it on CD years later, didn't like it when I heard the full version, didn't sound right at all.
Can I point you towards this?
Lard's mint vinyl records. Space Oddity's the best.
http://www.cix.co.uk/~lemoncurry/