Buddy Holly "Every Day"

Before I had my own Fisher-Price Record Player, there was Dad's record player.

Honestly, I don't remember him using it that much. I mean, I remember listening to the Red Sox on the big cabinets, but I don't really recall him putting on a lot of records. Except at Christmas. Then the Mitch Miller LPs came out.

But somewhere early on, I developed a fascination with the turntable.

And let's face it, even if a record player didn't play records, it's a pretty fascinating mechanism. The spinning, the lights, the needle following the tiny, tiny groove from the outer edge to the middle of the disc. Neat.

I wanted to use the record player, so Dad let me have one of his 45s.

Again, I don't really remember him having 45s. We had a nice chunk of LPs. Beatles. Beach Boys. Show tunes. But (at least in the box that I salvaged from when they moved out of our house, a few years ago) no 45s.

He had a 45 of Buddy Holly's "Every Day."

And I'd play that over and over and over.

Now, of course, I know who Buddy Holly is and what his significance is and where his music fits in the big context of things.

But coming out of my Dad's 1970s stereo, on an old 45, it just sounded like the coolest Music Box song I'd ever heard.

I played it again and again and again.

I was little. I didn't have a steady hand. I didn't understand vinyl. Or needles. I scratched up that record. I scratched it to the point it was unplayable.

Dad explained that he couldn't fix it. It was no good any more.

Forty-odd years later, how irritated am I, at my pre-school self? I could've had an original Buddy Holly 45!


Hear the song on Youtube.

Tag Team "Whoop There It Is"

I had a lot of great toys when I was a kid. And by virtue of being the oldest of 3 children, I had fun toys coming in the house long after I was at an age where you'd normally get kid toys.

I was well into middle school, but could still be in the basement, fascinated by my little sister's ball popper.

Or looking at the same old Viewmaster reels that I'd been clicking through for (literally) half my life.

And I loved our Fisher-Price record player. If you don't remember this toy, check out the demonstration video.


See it on Youtube.

It came with 5 two-sided records, which each played some kind of classic Americana piece (and I mean "Americana" in the nostalgic sense, not the roots-rock sense).

It's how I learned some of the canon of songs that included "Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone" and "London Bridge" and "Edelweiss" (as well as the now-considered-kind-of-racist "Camptown Races"). Songs that pretty much every one of every age, knew.

Looking back on it, it was kind of strangely educational.

(I'll point out that I'm sure Fisher-Price was not intending to educate me; all the songs involved were Public Domain tunes, meaning they didn't have to pay any licensing fees)

One of the fun things about being a parent, is that you get to buy toys for your kid, and play with them yourself.

So we have a Ball Popper and Candyland.

Some of the toys are updated, like the Fisher-Price Little People farm, which is now totally plastic, but still has the barn door that goes "Moo!"

And though you can buy a vintage Fisher-Price Record Player, they don't make 'em like they used to.

We received, as a gift, its modern-day equivalent:

The Little Tikes Pop Tunes Music Mixer.


See my son and I play with it on Youtube.

First, I think it's kind of funny yet cool that they still make a "Kids Record Player" since most of today's kids have never seen a record player, and never will.

And I'm actually okay with the idea of the turntable being a Club DJ/Mixin'-And-Scratchin' kind of turntable. It's fun enough.

But I'm struck with the music choices. Here in 2012, music licensing is big business, and it's easy. So there is no need to rely on Public Domain tunes.

Instead, the "Canon" that my son is learning includes "Free Your Mind" and "Whoop There It Is."

"Whoomp There It Is?" Is that really the "Edelweiss" of this generation?


See it on Youtube.

T Rex "Bang A Gong"

This Week: Excerpts From That Novel I'm Never Going To Write.

Here's the last excerpt I'll share. I remember when the light in my head went on, and I connected dinosaurs and vinyl . . . I just couldn't believe my brain came up with it.

Thanks for indulging me this week!


Vinyl was as doomed as the dinosaur.

Pea-brained and lumbering, the analogy is apt. Like the dinosaur, an LP’s brain could only contain a limited amount of information. And the dark discs were not portable.

With James Russell’s creation in the hands of the marketers, modifications were made to make the perfect beast.

And the perfect beast was determined to be 74 minutes long.

Why 74 minutes? That seems like an arbitrary number, doesn’t it? But somebody must’ve picked it, right? But who?

Well, depending on whom you ask, it was either Herbert von Karajan, Akio Morita or Norio Ohga.

Don’t know who the Polygram conductor, the Sony chairman, and the Sony president are? Doesn’t matter. Each would tell you that the real determination came from a man who died 50 years before Edison scraped his Reynolds Wrap.

Beethoven didn’t write his Ninth Symphony with the intention of you getting out of your chair in the middle of the piece to flip the record over. No, Ludwig Von meant his movement to be heard without your movement.

The CD prototype developed by Phillips was 11.5 centimeters in diameter---large enough to hold 60 minutes of music. Which was not quite long enough to hold a popular symphony.

So Sony’s prototype, at the suggestion of Karajan, Morita or Ohga, depending on what you read, was created slightly larger and therefore longer, to accommodate Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. And it became the industry standard.

With this lengthy advantage over vinyl, as well as the advantage of greater durability, there was only one more step to take to make CDs the consumer standard.

And that was to lower the price.

In the mid-eighties, record companies brought down the price of CDs, and raised the price of vinyl. Soon, they began printing fewer copies of an album on vinyl, and more on CD. Record buyers were more likely to find a new release on CD than record. CD sales skyrocketed, record sales plummeted.

But this was a trend manufactured from behind the scenes by corporations. It was not a natural evolution.

What killed off the dinosaurs?

Was it natural evolution? A comet? Smoking? A corporate committee? Sentient pond scum? War or disease or ennui? Was it destiny? Did the butler do it?

I suppose we’ll never know.

But we do know that dinosaurs lived on after death, if only to head toward a second extinction.

As their dying bodies sank into the sea and the mud, as millions of years of pressure and heat converted their remains into hydrocarbons, as hydrocarbons became petroleum, the dinosaurs came back to us.

Processed petroleum, when combined with chlorine, becomes vinyl.

Put on your old recording of “Bang A Gong,” and you’re spinning T Rex, literally.

Vinyl, a byproduct of extinction, was destined to be doomed as the dinosaur.