This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
CHICAGO • Those of a certain age remember the bond forged with music emanating from the intimacy of a needle riding the grooves of a vinyl record.
You may recall the accouterments: the 45-rpm adaptor, the velvet cylinder used to clean dust off the record and maybe a penny for rebalancing the stylus head.
Unless you had a super-fancy sound system, you sat, like Nipper, the famous RCA record label dog, close to a speaker, head cocked, listening intently for whatever it was that swelled your soul: lyrics, instrumentation, a voice. You had a musical experience.
Last month, after attending a particularly life-affirming piano concert, I began thinking about the outsize, yet inconspicuous role music plays in our lives today.
Music plays everywhere and is cheap, if not free, in any genre imaginable, at the click of a button. It will stream through your phone, iPad, computer or any other device with access to the Internet and go on without interruption, not caring whether you're paying attention to it or not.
Even those of us who do purchase music find ourselves with a less than satisfying experience. You go to a website or an interface like iTunes, search for a song, pay a buck or so to download it, then play it through the computer or through your phone.
In the unlikely event that you purchase a full album, you then have to store the thing in such a way that it will play back in order — maybe not an issue for Taylor Swift's latest, but required for, say, Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" or a multiple-movement symphony composed to be heard in a certain sequence.
In contrast, I recently found a rack of used vinyl records at my local Goodwill store, and not only did I enjoy standing there, combing through the stacks of LPs, but there was the album art to enjoy, the value of buying a whole album of carefully curated pieces of music for 99 cents and the extensive liner notes.
Liner notes!
When was the last time you read an album's liner notes? Does popular music even bother to make them anymore?
I came home with 15 albums of some of the most important orchestral music ever composed, played by the world's greatest orchestras in their prime — Boston Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Monteux, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York under Leonard Bernstein. Gold, in other words. Hours and hours of it for 15 bucks.
I bought a record player, shined up the vinyl and sat down to listen to Bernstein conduct Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy." You know the one — it's the romantic theme you hear in the kinds of ads where non-dairy butter-flavored spread meets heaving toast in a meadow and they fall in love for your breakfast consumption pleasure.
The piece — at turns dramatic, savage, syrupy and mournful during its 20-minute length — didn't sound as crystal clear as it does in any of the many digital versions on my phone and computer. But then again, I wasn't making dinner or writing out bills while I listened to it. I savored every crackle-infused silence and bordering-on-distorted crescendo.
The liner notes were a hoot, recalling the twist of fate that resulted in Bernstein's 1943 Carnegie Hall debut. Musicologist Charles Burr further noted that Tchaikovsky wrote the fantasy under the thumb of his mentor Mily Balakireff and wasn't happy about it. "Some say it was Balakireff who suggested an overture based on 'Romeo and Juliet.' At any rate, Tchaikovsky had to listen to more advice on how to write it than he cared to and complained in a letter to his brother Anatol: 'He obliges me to be with him the whole day, and this is a great bore.'"
A return visit to vinyl is not regression or nostalgia, it is a willful act of slowing down. Of relearning the pleasure of savoring, the self-control of concentrating, the challenge of looking at something old with new eyes.
As life moves faster and faster, with real-life and virtual spaces packed with sounds, messages and images tailored to suck up every last fragment of our attention, the kindest thing we can do for ourselves is to slow down in some meaningful, nurturing way.
If that means reading paper books, spending some time with yourself in silence or really intently listening to whatever music you like without distraction (digitally or otherwise) — do it. You won't regret it.
Twitter, @estherjcepeda