These days I often listen to music while feeding the Boy. It's the kind of mindless activity, like ironing, that lends itself to a good listen. Not that I do much ironing these days. It takes him 20-25 minutes to make his way through 150-180 ml of formula, about the same as one side of a record.
On Friday evening I put on Side 1 of Decode Yourself, perched him on my lap in my listening chair and got him drawing energetically on the bottle. Too late I realised that I could only hear the left channel. This has been a chronic problem with my turntable: there's a dodgy connection or two between the headshell and the tone arm. With a few minutes fiddling, if you can tolerate some horrible unearthed buzzing through the amp, you can usually get both channels working again. But once the Boy is feeding, you can maybe separate him from his bottle for a few seconds at a time, to let him catch his breath, or to have a go at winding him, but you cannot interrupt a feed for long enough to fiddle with your turntable — unless you want to see him scream himself past scarlet and into maroon. So on Friday all I heard was the left half of Side 1.
On Saturday morning, after the requisite trial and error I once again cued up Side 1 and a bottle of formula in parallel. This time I just got the right half! I abandoned that attempt in disgust, and, one-handed, cued up a podcast on my iPhone instead.
Now one of the reassuring things about my turntable is that all the things that have gone wrong with it have been wrong with it for more than twenty years. So it feels like it's stable. But there's always a worry that one day these dodgy connections will deteriorate to the point where no amount of fiddling will arrive at a good contact. I decided it was time for one of my rare inspections. And while I was at it, I might as well replace the old stylus with the new one I've had for over a year now. How do you know when to replace styluses? You can't wait until there's an audible loss of sound quality, surely — that would be too late. They say 2-300 plays, I think. Who counts?! How many records do I play in a year? In a lazy year, it could be only ten or fifteen. But since I've been working through my whole collection, it's probably more like 50-70. Next problem: I have no idea when I last replaced the stylus. Quite possibly not since last century…
When I came to remove the old stylus it wouldn't budge! I went in search of the instructions that came with the Audio-Technica cartridge: I've still got the booklets for the Dual 505 turntable (bought 1981) and my original cassette deck that's been retired to the loft. But nothing for the cartridge, if indeed it had instructions. I googled to see what I could find, and the best I came up with was this FAQ, which says "if the old stylus has not been changed for many years it may need a gentle sideways rock or twist. Do not use excessive force as the cartridge may get dislodged from the headshell or get damaged." I gave it a rock, a twist and excessive force, and finally it submitted to my will.
To my surprise, with the new stylus in place and the cartridge screwed back onto the headshell, and after the customary fiddling, it still worked! And I think the record did actually sound better, as well. With the Boy safely sleeping in another room, I listened to both sides.
…
As I mentioned before I went to see Ronald Shannon Jackson and half of the Decoding Society (I hadn't realised that Vernon Reid and Melvin Gibbs were part of that band) when they played at the Barbican under the billing of the Punk Funk All Stars. As I approached the foyer, a fellow patron accosted me, slightly hyperactive in his manner: "Are you going to the gig?", he asked. I confirmed. "Woah, man, Ronald Shannon JACKSON — yeeaaahhh!", he punched the air. In company, I might have arched a quizzical eyebrow; alone I might have nodded half-heartedly and quickened my step. But his enthusiasm was so unquestionably sincere that it was infectious. If anything, it raised expectations that the performers were unable to match.
…
Or else, expectations that I was unable to match. I've been listening to this music for two decades now. By "this music" I mean the sub-genre of hard jazz that includes Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, Shannon Jackson, James 'Blood' Ulmer and people like that. I enjoy it, to a degree, but only to a very shallow degree. I can't escape the feeling that much of what's going on in the music is lost on me. I've had conversations with other audience members — not the "Shannon JACKSON, yeeaaahhh!" kind (I can relate to those) but conversations that use a vocabulary I don't begin to understand, and I don't think they're bullshitting me when they talk in those terms — and I just wither with embarrassment at my lack of sophistication.
…
This record has one of those little cuts in the cover, about 7mm long and 1mm wide. Someone once told me what that means, but I've forgotten. Is it remaindered stock, or returns, or something? I seem to remember that the cut in the cover was to indicate that it was no longer considered salesworthy. Which meant that the record company had written it off — and if it should happen to be sold after all, then you can bet the artist isn't seeing that sale on their royalty statement.
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