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Apr. 12th, 2010 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI decided, as I was packing up the stereo cabinet yesterday, I don't need my tape deck, eight-track player, or turntable anymore. They were a few more remainders from my past quest to be able to one day play back every form of standardized media ever created. I finally gave up that idea, along with the idea that more stuff means more things to do and more opportunities for fun (rather than just diffusing my efforts to the point of ineffectiveness), a while back. Giving up my videodisc player was the hardest part so far (and I still miss it sometimes), but I felt really weird about giving up my turntable too. I love records. I love the great big sleeves and the wonderful album art and the fact that those tiny little grooves are physical representations of sound waves and that, if you go back far enough, you have a real, physical, electricity-free connection between the instruments and voices that made music and the ears that heard it played back on those old acoustic victrolas.
But I do not need to be a preserver of this technology. There are other people and groups that will do this. I don't have a duty to obsolete hardware. I have a duty to myself to enjoy living in a clean, clutter-free space that makes me happy.
I brought the last of my grandparents' records to them when Mom and I visited on Sunday, and I left my records there as well. Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a recording of an authentic minstrel show, There Are But Four Small Faces, Colonel Sanders testifying about his personal salvation, and other oddities. Good-bye records. It was nice to know you.
My grandfather digitized one of the one-sided 78s that Moira and I found at a garage sale a while back and played it back for me on his computer while I was there. It was a vaudeville bit called Flanagan on a Farm. It's funny; a while back,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rileybear67 had explained the difference between supper and dinner to me. I remembered that well as the titular Flanagan talked about being on a farm and being fed a great big breakfast, then a great big dinner right on top of that, and before he could get up, a great big supper.
Now, said the farmer, you can go right out into the field and work all day since you've already had all three meals!
Flanagan, of course, was prepared for this and replied that, much as he'd like to, he couldn't; he always goes to bed straight away after supper.
From what I can tell, this was recorded around 1908. As I commented tomoiracoon, it really makes you wonder about the cultural history behind this recording. It seems like just a silly monologue, but what was the common perception of Irish people, and farmers, behind it? What was life like on a farm, or for travelling immigrants? Could you just show up at a farm and ask to be put to work? There are so many questions behind two-and-a-half minutes of hundred-year-old comedy.
But I do not need to be a preserver of this technology. There are other people and groups that will do this. I don't have a duty to obsolete hardware. I have a duty to myself to enjoy living in a clean, clutter-free space that makes me happy.
I brought the last of my grandparents' records to them when Mom and I visited on Sunday, and I left my records there as well. Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a recording of an authentic minstrel show, There Are But Four Small Faces, Colonel Sanders testifying about his personal salvation, and other oddities. Good-bye records. It was nice to know you.
My grandfather digitized one of the one-sided 78s that Moira and I found at a garage sale a while back and played it back for me on his computer while I was there. It was a vaudeville bit called Flanagan on a Farm. It's funny; a while back,
rileybear67 had explained the difference between supper and dinner to me. I remembered that well as the titular Flanagan talked about being on a farm and being fed a great big breakfast, then a great big dinner right on top of that, and before he could get up, a great big supper.Now, said the farmer, you can go right out into the field and work all day since you've already had all three meals!
Flanagan, of course, was prepared for this and replied that, much as he'd like to, he couldn't; he always goes to bed straight away after supper.
From what I can tell, this was recorded around 1908. As I commented to
moiracoon, it really makes you wonder about the cultural history behind this recording. It seems like just a silly monologue, but what was the common perception of Irish people, and farmers, behind it? What was life like on a farm, or for travelling immigrants? Could you just show up at a farm and ask to be put to work? There are so many questions behind two-and-a-half minutes of hundred-year-old comedy.
