“My parents had a record player when I was a kid, but we never played records on it. It sat like a fossil, with an arm that never moved and a table that never turned.”
“I’d ask my dad why we never listened to records, and he’d tell me ‘the machine needs a new needle’ without explaining to me what that meant. I’d heard that the needle had to be made of diamond as thin as a human hair, so I figured it was something we’d never have, being too rare and fragile for any modern household.
We had a record player at my first apartment in Montreal, but the amp never worked, so I’d spin records and put my ear to the needle and listen to the sound off the grooves. I remember being amazed that the sound was actually there, on the record, not encoded in 0s and 1s but embedded physically into the disc in a way that made the needle sing as it ran along the grooves.
One winter, my friend Katherine brought home a Fisher-Price record player from a garage sale. It was the cheapest thing, covered in dust with a built-in speaker. We had an Antony and the Johnsons 7″, “Hope There’s Someone,” and I remember putting it on and hearing Antony’s voice, glittering and soulful, rising up from the cheap plastic box. I’d always loved that song, and hearing it emerge as though by magic from a toy Katherine found on the street made me love it even more. It was like Antony was there in the room with us, singing ‘hope there’s someone to take care of me… when I die, will I go?’
It was impossible to tell whether the disc contained the song or the man, and all that jitter jazz, and we listened over and over until the needle got dusty and soon it did, then we retired the Fisher-Price to the closet but the memory remains.”
—Neil Holyoak
Neil Holyoak’s Rags Across the Sun will be available for sale on his Bandcamp page beginning October 1. On vinyl.
