A Shout Out to Thomas Edison
On Thursday, November 29, 1877, Thomas Edison revealed a device that was to fuel all of my adolescent fantasies: the phonograph.
It's difficult for me to imagine what life must have been like before recorded music. I recently completed a novel in which the heroine is a violinist, the hero a composer. In the first scene, she desperately tries to memorize the song she's just heard played. Without a way of recording the music, she had little hope of remembering the piece after only one hearing. Yes, there was sheet music, but it's difficult to recreate an entire symphony when you're looking at one instrument's part at a time.
Edison's first attempt wasn't all that different from the record players I knew and loved during my youth. There was a spinning cylinder, a groove, and a needle; there were speakers.
When I was a child, I watched a man walk on the moon for the first time. At school that autumn, I was one of a dozen children in my class who dreamed of becoming an astronaut. The teachers told us that sometime in our lifetime, we'd be living in outer space. A scant four months later, David Bowie released "Space Oddity", and the song became the soundtrack for all my dreams of space flight. (Only as an adult did I catch the double-edged metaphor between Bowie's astronaut and heroin use).
That was the first of many moments of my life that were punctuated by music. I remember where I was standing and what I was wearing the first time I heard The Damned's "New Rose" (arguably the first punk rock record). I met my husband in a record store while Elvis Costello's "Armed Forces" LP spun on the turntable.
In 1983, as my husband and I drove over the Bay Bridge together for the first time to the city where we'd live for more than 27 years, we listened to Bach's Brandenburg Concerto number 2. In a way, this song brought me full circle to my childhood memories of "Space Oddity." Is it any coincidence that this song was chosen to be the first one recorded on the played on the "golden record", a phonograph record containing a broad sample of Earth's common sounds, languages, and music sent into outer space with the two Voyager probes?
It's no wonder I wax nostalgic over vinyl records (no pun intended). They were a huge part of my identity; they were my obsession and the soundtrack of my life. A friend of mine who happens to be a full generation younger than I am came over for Thanksgiving dinner a few days ago. As I spoke of Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, and punk rock, he nodded rather dazedly, like I used to do when my father spoke of World War II or the Great Depression. When he piped up, it was to say that he had never seen a vinyl record! I was sad and amazed, and pulled out one of the thousands in my front parlor. We spent a good portion of the evening listening to some of those old songs -- none of which he'd ever heard. How does one grow to adulthood without having heard "Blue Suede Shoes?"
Today, in honor of the man whose invention gave me so much joy, I lift a glass to Thomas Edison.
Am I alone in having such vivid musical memories? Is this phenomena limited to my generation, or do youngsters have their own modern soundtracks (stored digitally, no doubt) that old fogies like me know nothing about?
It's difficult for me to imagine what life must have been like before recorded music. I recently completed a novel in which the heroine is a violinist, the hero a composer. In the first scene, she desperately tries to memorize the song she's just heard played. Without a way of recording the music, she had little hope of remembering the piece after only one hearing. Yes, there was sheet music, but it's difficult to recreate an entire symphony when you're looking at one instrument's part at a time.
Edison's first attempt wasn't all that different from the record players I knew and loved during my youth. There was a spinning cylinder, a groove, and a needle; there were speakers.
When I was a child, I watched a man walk on the moon for the first time. At school that autumn, I was one of a dozen children in my class who dreamed of becoming an astronaut. The teachers told us that sometime in our lifetime, we'd be living in outer space. A scant four months later, David Bowie released "Space Oddity", and the song became the soundtrack for all my dreams of space flight. (Only as an adult did I catch the double-edged metaphor between Bowie's astronaut and heroin use).That was the first of many moments of my life that were punctuated by music. I remember where I was standing and what I was wearing the first time I heard The Damned's "New Rose" (arguably the first punk rock record). I met my husband in a record store while Elvis Costello's "Armed Forces" LP spun on the turntable.
In 1983, as my husband and I drove over the Bay Bridge together for the first time to the city where we'd live for more than 27 years, we listened to Bach's Brandenburg Concerto number 2. In a way, this song brought me full circle to my childhood memories of "Space Oddity." Is it any coincidence that this song was chosen to be the first one recorded on the played on the "golden record", a phonograph record containing a broad sample of Earth's common sounds, languages, and music sent into outer space with the two Voyager probes?
It's no wonder I wax nostalgic over vinyl records (no pun intended). They were a huge part of my identity; they were my obsession and the soundtrack of my life. A friend of mine who happens to be a full generation younger than I am came over for Thanksgiving dinner a few days ago. As I spoke of Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, and punk rock, he nodded rather dazedly, like I used to do when my father spoke of World War II or the Great Depression. When he piped up, it was to say that he had never seen a vinyl record! I was sad and amazed, and pulled out one of the thousands in my front parlor. We spent a good portion of the evening listening to some of those old songs -- none of which he'd ever heard. How does one grow to adulthood without having heard "Blue Suede Shoes?"
Today, in honor of the man whose invention gave me so much joy, I lift a glass to Thomas Edison.
Am I alone in having such vivid musical memories? Is this phenomena limited to my generation, or do youngsters have their own modern soundtracks (stored digitally, no doubt) that old fogies like me know nothing about?
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