“I’m trying to remember when I had my first experience with vinyl. I know I was being subjected to it long before I could contemplate it. My parents have and still do have a massive collection of records, both in LPs to the thousands of 45s.”
“From a very young age I can remember wearing my dad’s enormous Warfdale headphone cans. They were essentially two massive speakers on my head. I don’t know what the first record was I played. I know I overplayed Band Aid and Rupert the Bear and Paul McCartney’s Frog Chorus. I can safely say that the record player was never off. Even for fun we would be cleaning records with a velvet brush. Well, that and no doubt scratching the hell out of the records when trying to put them on.
The most played records would no doubt be Queen, dad has a fair few—I think only two of the very early LPs are missing. Those records must have been played to death along with Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly soundtrack.
Another exceptionally vivid memory was the overly large collection of 45s we had. My gran had a series of bike shops and in the shops she had juke boxes. I remember that most of the 45s were not in sleeves and had the hole punched out the middle. I always took delight in explaining to people what the round bit of plastic—which was cello taped to their turntable—was for. “It’s for records that come from jukeboxes.” And with other nuggets of knowledge; “Do you know what HMV means? His Masters Voice.” Didn’t do anything for my youth street cred though.
We also has some incredible records which are still like something from another time. My gran (same one with the juke boxes) had been sent messages from the other side of the world from her then husband. These records never really played on the set speeds for LPs or 45s, so you had to slow it down by letting the turntable graze over your finger. They were very strange and very personal.
As time went on we changed the whole collection other than the 45s to CDs. The record collection became mine and thus came my time to add to it—sadly all I wanted to add to it though was Trance records. Even now as I type this (quite a random event caused by the iPod shuffling) there is some Ibiza anthem playing away through my headphones.
I no longer really played the old records unless I got drunk and thought, “I wonder if I can mix the Frog Chorus together with Ayla Ayla?” And the turntable was barely used—in replacement was my Numark decks. I grew out of that phase and returned to the old records. After watching High Fidelity I started reorganizing them, good A-Z, ok A-Z, and terrible (where I have only placed Rod Stewart.) I miss them though, they are my past, they are my old bedroom back in Alyth, or our first house in David Street. They are wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trousers and a Mario jumper while your sisters force-feed Rod Stewart into your cochlea.
I recently revisited my first date. Making dens from duvets and couches in my bedroom, I put on the Spencer Davis Group and any rock and roll record I can find on hand while I play with my nieces and nephews. There really is no feeling like the first time you turn the turntable on and the noise of the needle hitting the record before the track starts to play. My nieces and nephew don’t feel the same way, but love slowing down and speeding up the tracks.
They will find their love of it too, soon enough.”
—Graeme MacDonald
This Silent Forest’s debut LP, Indivision is on store shelves now.
