Tapes and Townes and Records
Waxing Nostalgic
“So, by the time I graduated high school, I had just about every Bob Dylan record…on tape. It meant something to me to utilize obsolete technology. Not just Bob, but the Stones and all the 1950s compilations I’d collected since childhood. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and also all the shmaltzy stuff from the early 60s; all on tape.
CDs never played a big part in my life. I didn’t buy any Nirvana album until after Cobain died. At the time I think I was really into show tunes. Rogers and Hammerstein. Cats. I didn’t have a girlfriend needless to say.
Turner Cody | Back In the Land of the Living
I did patronize BMG, the 5cds-for-fifty cents scam purveyed in the back of Rolling Stone. I know I got The Best of Lou Reed and Harvest. This was the beginning of my CD collection. Over the next year or so I got The first Bootleg Series, the self-titled Velvet Underground, and others I’m sure. But my CD collection could never rival my tapes. (Incidentally, all those CDs were usurped by my first girlfriend at the event of our breakup through some osmosis of ownership. Call it a kind of juvenile alimony.)
And so the jump from tapes to vinyl for me was natural. The less efficient the better. Maybe you should have to work a little bit to listen to the music you love. Maybe it should a require a minimum of effort. Flipping over the record. Avoiding scratches. Re-winding the tape spool which became entangled in the revolving mechanism. These small efforts of preservation and care are important. The cover? Definitely. The sound? Maybe. But its really about a lack of efficiency.
A teacher of mine in high school gave me a Townes Van Zandt tape in oh, 1997. The way he talked about Townes was as if he kind of knew him. I’m sure he didn’t, but I’m sure he saw him play. And maybe after one of those shows, he talked with him. And so in a way he did know him. More than anyone could ever claim to know Bob or Mick or anyone of those guys in the stratosphere. And he’s not the only guy who I’ve heard talk about Townes that way. My father’s college pal has links to Townes through Colorado in the ’70s. Links which by all accounts are deep and true. A guy I who booked me in Austria put on some Townes shows in the late 80s in some little place on some Alpine mountain or something. That’s one thing that Townes means to me: a great one who is not beyond us, but of us.
And so when Fat Possum re-issued the Townes records a couple years ago I was thrilled. Who better to own records of than Townes? The man was all about inefficiency and grace. I own Flying Shoes and Our Mother the Mountain. I adore “Be Here To Love Me” “Rex’s Blues” and “Tecumsea Valley.” But I love it all. Even what I don’t love I love. I wish I could go buy the first, self-titled record and Delta Mama Blues right now. I would but I have to pay my rent. But maybe I will anyway.”
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