The Hilton tapes

I've never liked cds. God invented coasters for a reason. And digital music is really an unsatisfying non-entity. I'm a liquorice pizza guy myself, though my chances to drop the needle seem to diminish with every passing week (and it's a nightmare trying to play a record in a car). It's not just the experience - the large square cover, the feel of the heavy vinyl in your hands, the crackle of static - it's actually the sound. So much "digitally-remastered" stuff sounds too sharp, IMO. It pierces the eardrums, like a California girl's scream. Vinyl is richer, more sonorous, like Maria Callas's perfume.

I know, I sound like an old fuddy-duddy. But I do miss the muffled sound I grew up with on vinyl and tapes. I often listen (on cd) to an album I have loved for years (on tape) and I just don't like it as much. The mood has been digitally removed. It's less romantic, more sterile. Like a hospital ward compared to an old beach shack.

This morning I've been playing some old, dust-laden tapes - Neil Young, The Doors, a bit of Boccherini - and I'd almost forgotten the old forked hand trick. One finger on the forward-wind button, one on the stop button, one on the play button. How many hours must I have spent as a teenager perfecting this guessing game as I searched (mostly in vain) for the start of a track?

It feels almost unbelievably backwards now, but it's too late: nostalgia has kicked in. Maddening bliss.