Opinion

Anita Robinson: Vinyl revival prompts memories of the way we were

Shoppers in the Love Vinyl record shop in Hoxton, east London. Picture by John Stillwell, Press Association  
Shoppers in the Love Vinyl record shop in Hoxton, east London. Picture by John Stillwell, Press Association   Shoppers in the Love Vinyl record shop in Hoxton, east London. Picture by John Stillwell, Press Association  

I’VE said it before and I’ll say it again, “Keep a thing long enough and it’ll eventually come back into fashion.”

I understand vinyl’s back in a big way. Well, what goes around comes around. I saw a news item with young ones gingerly handling flat, black discs, wondering what to do with them to get the music out.

As Barbra Streisand so mellifluously put it: “Memories light the corners of my mind. Misty watercolour memories of the way we were…”

I am fourteen. We’ve just installed in the corner of the living-room a handsome radiogram – half radio, half gramophone, the last word in modernity. It stands atop a matching cabinet housing my father’s modest collection of heavy, brittle shellac records – Count John McCormack, sounding thin and reedy through the hiss and crackle, long-deceased divas warbling their way through operatic arias and more symphonies than you could shake a stick at.

My father is delighted at the ease with which he can switch from listening to ‘The Archers’ to the William Tell overture. My grown-up sister with a penchant for tragedy, buys on vinyl Maria Callas, expiring exquisitely at thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute in every classical role she essays. We are a cultured family. I, meanwhile, am upstairs listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes.

Despite beating my way down memory lane through the accumulated musical detritus of many years, I’ve no recollection of the first disc I ever bought. I guarantee it was an instantly forgettable one-hit-wonder – the fist of many ill-judged purchases, all maudlin examples of bubblegum pop. How vitally important it was for peer credulity to be au fait with the current week’s Top Twenty, but all efforts to keep abreast of the zeitgeist were blighted by somebody shouting, “Turn off that infernal racket and get on with your homework!”

Saturday afternoons were spent with schoolmates in Phillips’ music shop, jostling for an ear in the listening booth, or feeding coins into a coffee-bar’s jukebox while making a Coke last as long as possible. Nowadays, while occupied with some mundane task comes a blast from the past on the radio that hurtles one back in time to that uneasy adolescence and images so vivid, so keen, they almost hurt. Oh, the evocative power of cheap music… Fortunately, my taste improved as I grew in wisdom, age and grace. More sophisticated friends introduced me to jazz and folk music while I kept very quiet about my early personal archive and cultivated a love of musicals, film scores, opera, Frank Sinatra and his ilk.

Few people recall what a hazardous faff vinyl was to look after and store – always remembering to hold discs by their edges, wipe with an anti-static cloth, store in their sleeves away from heat, never allow to get scratched. There was many a casualty at parties where people smoked and drank and the vibration from dancing feet caused the record-player’s stylus to bounce and someone’s cherished album was ruined.

Time and technology moved swiftly on and compact little cassette recordings became the Next Big Thing, with the added bonus of being perfect in-car entertainment.

Always several steps behind the trend, it took me years to replace my favourite records with cassette tapes. They were not entirely trouble-free, but had a tendency to ‘kink’ or loosen and had to be tightened by a twirled pencil.

No sooner had I completed my collection than along came CDs, which impinged upon me not at all – until I changed my car without noticing it had a CD player but no cassette facility. It seems I’ve paid thrice in a lifetime to keep my memories evergreen.

Now vinyl’s back, sales of record-players are booming and people who rashly gave away or dumped the originals are kicking themselves. A friend of mine who, for charity, followed the advice in a women’s magazine, heated her vinyl records in the oven till pliable, draped each one over an upturned bowl and, hey presto, produced snazzy black flowerpots with ready made drainage hole.

In the immortal words of Connie Francis, “Who’s sorry now?”