Remembering the 7" 45 RPM Record
Published by Toronto Mike on April 4, 2010 @ 21:23 in Memories, Music
I've loved music for as long as I can remember. I used to buy my favourite singles on vinyl as 7" 45 RPM records. We called these 45s.
I used to buy my 45s at the Sam the Record man that used to exist on Bloor Street just east of Jane. When I was about 12 or 13 I'd pick up the single I was digging that week, usually on 680 CFTR, and I distinctly remember getting change back from my fiver.
I loved listening to my 45s. There was something very cool about gently lifting the needle and laying it down on the 7" vinyl. She'd grab a groove and go. About 3.5 to 4 minutes later, she'd be done, and you'd set her up for another spin. You just don't get that intimacy with MP3s.
It's Sunday night and I'm getting all nostalgic about vinyl, but would I trade my new digital world for the pop and spider that came with my old 45s? Hell no, but it's a lot of fun looking back. Here's my copy of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell". I still remember the day I picked up this gem.
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Digger
April 4, 2010 / 22:39
There was, and I think still is, something to be said for a real, physical format for one's favourite music. I still have my 45s in a box in the basement. They have to go there. I don't even have proper storage room for all of my CDs in the room with the stereo.
I had a small record player growing up. That, my portable radios and cassette recorders kept this budding music fan going for years. I couldn't wait to see the weekly charts in the Winnipeg Free Press and ask my mom to take me to the mall so that I could go in to the record store. If it wasn't the mall, the music section at the department store would have to do. In my teen years in Toronto, there were frequent, regular Saturday trips downtown to go album shopping with friends.
Huge gaps in the Winnipeg AM radio dial had me tuning to find out what else was out there apart from Winnipeg's three top 40 radio stations. Plenty, it turned out.
I was not the only one growing up in the Winnipeg area thinking that way. It turns out Alan Cross grew up not too far from where I was. Alan and I had an e-mail exchange going several months back, which resulted in him posting some of what I wrote to him on exploremusic.com after I noted that my 13 year old son was having a great time going through my accumulation of vinyl. Link: The Lost Glories of Liner Notes Part 1
It is simply impossible to have a remotely similar attachment to a digital media file vs. a physical copy of a song, album, video, etc. Delete something? Oops. Lose or damage a record or disc? Dammit!!!