I Never Learned To Skate Backwards by Shiloh

Listening to some old records tonight...
Records.
You know, those big, black, flat round things
with the little holes in the center,
grooves all around the thing...
you put them on a record player...
A record player!
A big electric box that you played the records on.
And you put the needle on the record,
(no! not that kind of needle!)
and as the record goes around,
a song is played.
Yeah. A song. One song.
One at a time.
It's called a 45.
(no! not that kind of 45!)
A record. A big disc.
Oh? You know what a disc is?
OK, then a record is like that, but not quite...
Oh, I can't get it through to you...
Here - just listen for a couple minutes...
...just watch...
This is a record, and this is a record player...
...listen:
That's Dave "Baby" Cortez,
an organist,
and the song is called Rinky Dink...
I used to roller skate to that song.
Quad skates - they didn't have inline then.
And we went to skating rinks,
and we skated to music that was played by an organist -
they usually had a big old Hammond organ,
and a lot of church organists made extra money playing at the rinks...
Ahh... I can close my eyes and remember...
too old now to skate, but I can remember...
swaying to the music of that old favorite...
nothing quite like it, back then, or since.
Every once in a while I like to put that old record on and just go back.
It was a good time, then.
I never did learn to skate backwards,
but I can listen, and I can go back...

Thankfully I still have a decent collection of records... few thousand songs, give or take a few thousand, and there will never be anything that can ever replace the old pop and hiss and static of a vinyl record turning, or the few seconds of scratching as the needle first lands on the record and goes into the groove and the song starts... it was magic of a kind...

genius (74.67.87.64) -- Thursday, February 24 2011, 06:10 pm

I four letter L word it
I got hysterical on that one

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