A couple of weeks ago, John Scalzi posted a video of his 13 year old daughter reacting to her first sight of a vinyl record. She did not believe that anything so primitive could possibly have existed.
It caused a bit of a fuss, as a lot of people assumed it was staged or rehearsed. So much so that Scalzi disabled comments on the video and put up a rebuttal, here, which MIGHT be staged.
It is hard to believe that she lived for 13 years in a house with LPs and never opened one before, I admit. Then again, some years ago I came home after Cleaner Monthly Visit Day and found the record player was on, with the stylus gouging a deep groove into the rubber mat. I thought that it was possible to hit the "auto play" button by accident, though, so I bought a new stylus and gave them the benefit of the doubt. A few years later, it happened again. I phoned the cleaners' firm and tried to describe what had happened, and the owner said, "You can't possibly expect the cleaning crew to know what a record player is!"
I retorted that a crew who rubbed cleaning cloths across buttons on equipment ought to be aware that "on" buttons activate things, and he agreed to come out and watch the record player in use. He grudgingly admitted that there was enough clicking, arm movement and subsequent loud noise that maybe someone should have known that they had pressed a button, even though he clearly felt that no normal person had ever seen a turntable in action and couldn't be expected to recognize one.
Scalzi junior's rebuttal was an interesting development for me today, of all days, as my biggest news this fine day - and probably biggest news all month - is that renowned vinylphile Jack White announced he is releasing his first solo album. It will be available, on vinyl of course, on 23rd April. The single is available for download (equally of course) tonight, but the vinyl single will be on sale on February 7th. The album is called Blunderbuss and the single (on vinyl!) is called Love Interruption. The b-side, in the classic way of vinyl, is not on the forthcoming album, and is called Machine Gun Silhouette. Rob Jones is said to be involved.
The single is streaming at Jack White's new website www.jackwhiteIII.com at this very moment.
Enjoy, assuming your daughter and/or your cleaning crew have left you with a workable stylus!
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