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08th April, 2014
Holding back the years - From LP, CD, Cassette to Digital

There are pop idols and there are musical heroes. Though the expression may be the same, in reality the two are worlds apart. Pop idols for that matter are made, while musical heroes are born. They do not achieve their status by virtue of their looks or image, though that is part of the package. They come in any shape or size, for the bottom line is and will always be their ability to make music, to move or transport one to have a close rapport with the listener.

The pop scene of the 60s and 70s was bursting with vocal groups, solo artists and instrumentalists. Each vied for a place on the charts. Then times were different, the radio in UK (Radio Luxembourg) was the only mode where teenagers could listen to the latest chartbusters, and with the only alternative being the reliable gramophone. ‘Top of the Pops’ was next in line to showcase music artists on TV.

The Radio:

The era of the spool tapes and vinyl records and later mini cassettes (tapes) were memorable, for you had a very small but interesting bunch of music that went around and which sounded good. Radio was the only means of listening to good music in Mumbai. In the late 60s and 70s we had programmes like Cibaca Geetmala by Ameen Sayani, or the ever popular Ceylon radio station that played the latest western chartbusters. Saturday Date with Alerick Ferns was another much awaited radio programme on All India Radio (AIR) all played on long playing records. It comes as no surprise that AIR still has a wide collection of old records in its studio.

The Record:

The vinyl records had their special beauty. You had the crackling sound coming from it, the problem of going over to the player and turning the record to Side B. More than that, records were more bulky, took space and were heavy to carry around. The player on the other hand had to have a clean diamond stylus. You also had to make sure there was no wow and flutter sound. With time, the gramophone turned into a radiogram that had a radio and a gramophone in one unit. Then came the changer, which dropped records and played over them. But with all these problems and new inventions it was a pleasure to listen to records. You had records from 16 1/3 rpm, 45 rpm to 78rpm and 33 1/3 rpm. One cannot forget the colored records from pink, red, blue and white. The youth of the 1960 and the 1970s had plenty of heroes to choose from, you had the unforgettable Bob Dylan, The Osmonds; good ole Texan Jim Reeves, Mick Jagger the innocent faces of the American Jackson 5 or the Brit fab four The Beatles among others.

While the list of artists would be endless and omitting a few might cause discomfort to certain fans, the big names who made real music compared to what is dished out today can never go unnoticed. Legendary '70s music groups Blondie, George Baker Selection, Carly Simon, Olivia Newton-John, Barry Manilow, Air Supply, Elton John, Chicago, Dr. Hook and many more made music that was timeless. No once can forget the balladeer Julio Iglesias who made Latino based tracks that were simply mind blowing. To All the Girls I’ve Loved before, Forever and ever, Hey, Feelings, Yours and many more. He still makes music in his hometown while son Enrique not falling on the success of his father has a fan following of his own. In the same vein you would also have the King of rock and roll – Elvis who lies motionless in Graceland, Memphis Tennessee, while fans the world over still swing to his hits like Jailhouse Rock, All Shook up, Heartbreak Hotel, King Creole and many others. U2, Sting, Bruce Springsten, swear by Elvis for if not for him they wouldn’t be making music today. His CDs are the most sought after and there could be no music lover who has not listened to one of his songs the most recent being a remix of A Little less conversation – Elvis vs JXL. You also have the ever loving Tom Jones who gave us Delilah, Green Green Grass of Home, Kiss. After a brief sabbatical he came with a vengeance in the nineties with the rocking pop hit Sex Bomb. Keeping with the times, we guess.

70 year old Joshua Delima a resident of Mumbai and a collector of old LP records that today count to about 2000 cannot forget his days playing the old LPs on his HMV four speed gramophone record player. “I still play those records even now. Nat King Cole, Demis Roussos, Charlie Pride, oh the list goes on. You can actually make out the music coming out of the record, as though the person is singing it in front of you. You can touch the music, you can feel it” he states nostalgically. When given a CD of his favorite Jim Reeves, he hands it back to you and says. “His voice would sound better on LP for nothing compares to an LP sound”. Delima mentions with a smile.

Chennai born Arnold George Dorsey better known to the whole world as Engelbert Humperdinck who DJs preferred labeling as ‘The Humper’ is still popular years after his hits made him famous. Humperdinck’s first single Release Me’stayed at No. 1 spot for a record 56 consecutive weeks curbing the rise of co – Brits the Beatles’ Penny Lane. His bushy side locks were copied by Elvis, and today Enge as he’s also fondly called who completes four decades in showbiz is till considered the King of Romance for songs like The Last Waltz, There goes my Everything. He still makes music and his visit to India in 2005 for the release of his new album ‘Let there be Love’.

We also have the folksy tunes of the brother - sister combo The Carpenters, who used to be the opening act for Engelbert and later hit the big time and found themselves on Top of the World for a few years before biting the dust and disappearing altogether. Cat Stevens, Dean Martin, Jimmy Paige, ELO, Lou Reed, Frank Zappa to the late seventies Queen, The Who, Deep Purple, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, were a legacy of the pop and rock era. There’s no one who can ever forget the folksy nasal sounding Bob Dylan who after over 44 albums is not sitting idle. Last year the man released Modern Times. At the launch organized by the record label, college going youth and media answered trivia without batting an eyelid and the more courageous even sang a line or two. The seventies also saw the advent of the mini skirt and the pill being answer to what the youth needed. While Bob Dylan tried his best to proclaim that the answer was Blowing In the Wind, many women found a better answer in the Pill.

Cassette:

But it was the late 70s that really rocked the boat and saw a new sound emerging that came to be known as ‘disco’. Alongside LP records were the introduction of the Cassette. Miniature spools of brown tape encased in between sheets of plastic had over 90 minutes of music. Cassettes were relatively cheaper too. Recordings from Kool and the Gang, Georgio Moroder to Donna Summers, Gloria Gaynor, Barbara Streisand brought the advent of disco to the world. But the LP record still had its fancy at discos all around. Two in one music systems with radio and cassette players were the in thing to listen to music. The Swedes of ABBA gave the world hits like The Winner takes it all, Super Trouper, Fernando and many more. More than a dozen albums later the world was shocked when differences erupted in the band and each went their separate ways. Many have tried to emulate them; some have even done numerous covers. , and more recently a troupe calling themselves ABBA, even managed to make a quick dash to Indian shores and regale audiences on their music. But ABBA was ABBA and surely nothing would come close to the original even the stage or the recent movie version of ‘Mamma Mia’. Van McCoy’s The Hustle brought in line dancing, gowns and other partly pre-choreographed dances; many line dances can be seen in films such as ‘Saturday Night Fever, which also features the Hustle. The Tavares, The Bee Gees produced a string of disco pumping beats like More Than a woman’ Stayin’ Alive, Night Fever, Jive Talkin’ for the soundtrack of ‘Saturday Night Fever’.

Many other European artists also recorded disco music; Germany for instance had Frank Farian who formed a disco band by the name Boney M around 1975. They had a string of number one hits in a few European countries, which continued into the early 1980s with songs such as Daddy Cool, Brown Girl in the Ring, Rasputin and Rivers of Babylon. Still today, the trademark sound of Boney M is seen as emblematic for late 70's German disco music. We also had our very own noted music composer of Indian orgin Biddu, now a citizen of the UK, who produced his own element of disco pop in the 70s when he discovered diva queen Tina Charles and Carl Douglas who gave the world I love to Love, Dance little lady dance, Dr. Love’and Kung Fu Fighting and Dance the Kung Fu.

While the world was spinning to new genres in music the LP record was becoming redundant slowly. HMV was the only company in India who manufactured LP records, their last being ‘Dil To Pagal Hai’ in 1994. Cassettes were the new form of listening to music. So much so that the cassette walkman came into existence making music lovers take music where ever they went. You also had Digital Audio Tapes (DATs) which were half the size of the normal cassette.

Disco fever reached a peak in South Asia and its vibrations were felt in the 1982 Bollywood film ‘Disco Dancer’. Mithum Chakraborty played an Indian disco champion who is out to get revenge on P. N. Oberoi (Om Shivpuri) a rich industrialist, who once slapped and insulted his mother. The infamous song I am a Disco Dancer had every ingredient of disco with a whole setup of disco stage lighting, flared pants and raised hand dancing.

When MTV, the first ever music video channel was launched in the US in the summer of 1981, it changed the view of music overnight. The priority now changed from what music looked like, to how it sounded. Visuals were the in thing.

The 80s megastars, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boy George, Bruce Springsteen, Bread, Elton John, Bryan Adams, Prince, Spandua Ballet, Duran Duran, George Michael, Lionel Richie, Rod Stewart, Ultravox and a host of others had the looks and the style that people were looking for. As for the music, the Eighties witnessed an astounding variety of different styles and genres, from new psychedelia to acid house, electronic disco to death metal, synthesizer, Goth rock to hip hop, folk to techno pop. But we are not interested in going into the rock element here, but a mention is needed nevertheless. You also had the sound of Pink Floyd playing all around with Another Brick in the Wall to Queen dishing out Another one bites the Dust to his anthemic I want to break free.Gender bending was in. Freddie Mercury and Boy George are perfect examples. The women were not left behind either. They started dressing like men. Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics took cross-dressing to such an extent that in one video she played a woman pretending to be a man and vice versa.

Compact Discs:

The mid eighties saw the advent of the Compact Disc (CD) being manufactured. A simple disc that read from the inside to the outside edge, reverse of how a LP record works. The world’s first compact disc was manufactured at the Philips factory near Hanover, Germany, on 17th August 1982. The first commercially CDs pressed were ‘The Visitors’ by ABBA and a recording of a symphony by Herbert von Karajan. In 1985, Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’ became the first CD to sell more than one million copies. Early CDs were only 60 mins long, but were bumped off to the present 74 mins, more because they had to accommodate Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

But not all music was available immediately on CD as its price remained staggering high. Cassettes were still in the main source to listen to music, until the 90s when cassettes almost became defunct. India witnessed this change only in the late 90s. The CD was launched on the similar lines of an LP except of course it was digital and small in size, was much easier to use compared with the LP. You could skip tracks in a jiffy; go back and forth and even fast forward to the track you wanted – all this from the comfort of your chair. This was not the case with the LP records. It was more a manual job. Besides a single CD could contain data of both sides of an LP and even more too.

Musically the era also had a major collection of one hit wonders with the result that anyone could become a star in the early 80s as long as they had long flowing hair, wore layers of mascara and dressed in glamorous party frocks. With music stars smiling to the bank, they also spared a thought for the less privileged. Britain's top music stars joined together to form Band Aid; producing a single Do They Know It's Christmas? for the starving people of Ethiopia, after which came the Bob Geldof Live Aid concert in Wembley Stadium that became a movement for the song We are the World. Watched by 1.5 billion people on television, over £50 million was raised to help famine relief in Africa. A similar concert was also held in July 2005 that brought together over a 100 artists, a few were also those who participated in the show 20 years ago.

The music of the new millennium:

The 90s saw the influx of a range of new genres like house, drum and bass, trance, hip – hop and much more. It also saw the introduction of the Ipod, which gave digital music in the form of a small palm sized gadget. But the quality of music certainly cannot be compared with that of the 60s or the 80s. The music available today is nothing short of an amalgamation of violence, sex, debasement of women, the occult and drugs. Though one cannot deny that it did exist in the 70s and 80s, but the times then were different compared to what it is today. Take a look at the music videos these days and its nothing short of violence and sex. There is no need to take names of the artist, one is better than the other. But there are also a few artists who have lyrics as well as music videos minus all the sleaze.

Play a select 70s record today and you will find a few music aficionados doing the hustle to popping eyelids around. But then that was the style, which is still loved even today. It’s no wonder that many discos and pubs in India still have special vintage theme nights that play bestsellers like Hotel California (Eagles), Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison), Shelter from the Storm (Bob Dylan) to songs by Janis Joplin, Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, Queen and others. The music world has had its share of one hit wonders, super hit makers and those who have come to stay and still make music while there are those who made music and left for their heavenly abode. But it cannot be denied that every minute somewhere in the world, there is a 60s, 70s or 80s song playing at a wedding, a disco, a party, on the radio or as a ring tone on a mobile phone.

-- By Verus Ferreira

 


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