The Joy of Listening to LPs and Drinking Wine and Hanging with Friends

Just spent this past weekend visiting friends up in Norwich. It was fun, and when I suggest that there are certain rituals to be observed (bringing wine for my friends, and multiple boxes of the same candies for the kids), that shouldn't be taken as a criticism. It seems eminently fair that I should try to get the children on-side, as guests coming to stay usually means having to be on your best behavior and maybe doing boring stuff, like going to cathedrals.

At least, that's how I remember it from my own childhood (minus cathedrals, which we don't have in Palo Alto).

But I'd say my big highlight was listening to records - honest-to-gosh LPs on a turntable - after the kids had been packed off to bed. It helps that my friend has good taste in music (even if I'm a bit less keen on Bob Dylan than he is), but what struck me was how pleasurable the physical act of choosing a record, putting it on the turntable and listening to it properly (with some interludes for chatting and for topping up the alarming amounts of booze we drank).

This is something that's struck me recently at my own house, as well - last year I rediscovered the pleasures of CDs when I started listening to them on the Bose sound system we have at home. After years of listening to music on Apple laptops or on Apple headphones, it was like the first time I put on a pair of eyeglasses... everything suddenly jumped into focus.

I sometimes wonder if that lack of sound quality on digital has something to do with how most people listen to and value (or more appropriately, don't value) music now. The obvious thing is that streaming services and YouTube commoditize music by making it "free", but I feel that in itself isn't a strong enough motive to reduce music purely to background status, as most people seem to want it for nothing more than background noise for reading, cooking, driving, whatever.

Heck, I love having music on while reading or writing, so I'm not innocent of the charge myself.

But when the music is nice and clear, so that you can hear each note and each instrument properly, and when you're spending time with friends, the music becomes the objective. We listened to Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, and so on, and it all sticks with me because for once we were paying attention to it.

It reminds me of a news story I once read about the placebo effect. The ritual involved makes the placebo more effective - so taking a fake pill is more effective than drinking a liquid, but a fake injection is even more effective than that. So I wonder if the pleasure at listening to music, and the sound quality, reflects the ritual of selecting the disc, putting it on the turntable and, ever so carefully, placing the needle.

Or, you know, maybe I only think I notice it because it's how I grew up with music. Who knows?

Though now I'm thinking about buying a turntable of my own...