Vinyl is extremely tenacious.
Although it is erased even from the most fashionable needles, it crackles and jumps.
Anything happens to him.
But here we are discussing it, talking about it, and who, tell me, wants to talk about CDs?
So that.
About the achievements of science and technology, as well as about the library of scrolls and manuscripts.
Vinyl turned into manuscript.
It is now flexible and durable.
The heavy one is not particularly bendable, but the thin 80s gives a good amplitude in the hands.
There is something in this - to listen to how he plays without a needle, only from air vibrations.
A long time ago, vinyl (let's consider this a conditionally common noun) was fragile, called shellac, came from India and Asia, and such small insects - lacquer bugs - made it there.
They drank delicious tree sap, turning it into resin - a kind of varnish on trees.
After it was collected - in June and November - it was crushed, washed and dried.
They put them in canvas bags, adding a little arsenic sulfide, and slowly melted them over charcoal.
The molten varnish was pushed through the canvas and melted again - and only then, the second time, was it cast into rectangular shapes.
You see, what an irony of fate and the universe as a whole: shellac is the world's only resinous varnish of animal origin, all other resins are vegetable.
And it turns out that thanks to parasitic insects, humanity of the faithful for 70 years kept afloat - they recorded and listened to the sound.
Classical music, speeches of leaders, first jazz, newborn rock.
78 rpm.
The great gramophone era.
Everything that we call mothballs (very thoughtlessly), everything from which the current pop culture originated (beautiful, accurate name), rests on shellac, fragile like glass.
I've seen it crash a couple of times.
In the hands of collectors.
And what a moment ago cost decent money turned into a pile of fragments.
And they were collected.
And they continued to store.
For memory.
Elvis also came out of shellac.
And where would we be without the lacquer bugs?
And who would we be?
Shellac was both incredibly elastic (when working with it) and hard (in finished plates), resistant to scratches and water, and also extremely accurate in castings.
But short-lived ...
Vinyl was invented around 1948.
He captured the markets in eight to ten years.
And it became a symbol of sex revolutions, cultural revolutions, global upheavals, planetary revelations and other more and less absurdities.
And nobody.
Nobody can move him.
From the throne.
However, please do not think that if some newfangled band releases their next "loud and breakthrough album" on vinyl, they know what they are doing.
Does not know.
It's just the way it should be.
Otherwise - "not pretentious and not cool."
In April 1981, an interesting issue of America magazine was published, dedicated to rock culture.
It is still being sold, resold from hand to hand.
There is not much to read there - even for the non-American public (it would seem) it was not possible to try properly.
But there are words and letters about all the greats of the South.
There are their drawings (once in my childhood I took apart the entire issue by page and pasted them over the walls of the room).
And there are two full spreads of vinyl albums that "set the course of history."
I was given this number in 1984.
I was 15. And two albums - one from each spread - were in my house.
And you could listen to them.
I don't know if it is now possible to convey, to feel that state of my spacewalk.
This is vinyl.
The smell of paper and a disc heated from the turntable.
Photos, footnotes in microscopic letters, sometimes - the lyrics inside.
Vinyl.
Do you understand?
Live vinyl, once descended from insects.
Not literally.
But a chain of succession.
This is a small text.
Doesn't sound like me.
But what is the use of spreading along the tree?
Better - a varnish crust.
Buy a turntable.
Any.
And a dozen records.
To definitely like it.
And then we'll see.
Then you will either be thrown ashore, you will dry your clothes, comb your hair with your fingers, and move on.
Or.
You will be carried away to the open ocean.
And your life will change forever.
The Soviet Union had the world's largest vinyl production - "Aprelevka" produced 100 million discs a year.
Officially.
And so - and all 150. And there were also the Moscow Experimental and the Leningrad, Riga and Tashkent factories.
I listened to the double album of the radio play "Alice in Wonderland" with the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky to the holes, to the wheeze of the last tracks pressing against the red apple.
Many years later, when “not the same”, but still “Melody” re-released “Alice” in Germany, I carried the album (brilliantly published, “heavy”) home with a sinking heart.
I prepared for a long time.
I walked in circles.
I waited for everyone to go to bed.
Set it at midnight.
And he left to the point before four in the morning.
It's vinyl.
He will outlive everyone.
And it will be very expensive for interplanetary, intergalactic flea markets.
The disc that particularly shocked me as a child and was seen by me in America magazine among the “history-changers” was Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden.
And he was not mine, they gave me to listen to him, for four months.
Each time I held it in my hands more trembling than my favorite Christmas tree toy (believe me, I was moved by them too).
Four months later, I honestly returned it to the owner.
A terrible day in my life.
And 15 years later, when I was offered to buy a small collection of Japanese discs of the deceased diplomat, I arrived without bargaining, took all Elvis - and already in the car, covered in cold sweat, I realized that the very Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden was back to me.
Not the same as that, namely that one - I remembered every point and indentation of the envelope, a couple of almost imperceptible scratches on the second side, a slightly glued corner of a colored orange insert with lyrics, Elvis' concert remarks and his drawings.
He is with me now.
And I'll listen to him tonight.
It's vinyl.
So don't be here ...
To wave all sorts of iridescent compacts.
Buy that magazine.
Not for the text.
For the magic of America.
Which never really happened - just a fairy tale.
But what kind.
What instrumental, voices, accompaniment.
As with Vysotsky's Alice in Wonderland.
There is no country.
There is no Vysotsky.
But there is a world of "Alice" recorded and sung, casted millions of times in vinyl.
And it cannot be erased.
The eraser was not invented.
And fairy tales, by the way, began to come true more and more often.
And who knows ...
What "land of dreams of an unrealizable future" will one day become reality.
Who knows.
The author's point of view may not be the same as the editorial