Shellac That Takes You Back

A Kind of Immortality There’s something exquisitely ironic about publishing and editing a paper dedicated to joyous and lively syncopated music and not finding the time to listen to that music for my own enjoyment. I must sadly admit here that until last month I hadn’t played records for the sake of playing records in years. The act of “playing records” entails intent and attention. I’m not talking about dropping a needle on a “vinyl” and using it for background music. The records of which I speak are made of various shellac compounds, rotate at high speed (76.59, 78.26, or 80 RPM), and average three minutes per side. To listen to a record you place the phonograph stylus on the outermost extent of the groove of the spinning disc and you listen. I’ve collected these things since grade school and everyone thought I was nuts for loving them. And except for the young analog fetishists (who call all records “vinyls”) and experienced shellac-hounds who know what they’re looking for, most people consider them trailer ballast. I’ve managed to amass over ten thousand of the old shellac discs. Last October I bid on a mere handful of items from Nauck’s Vintage Record Auction. In previous auctions I’d place nominal bids on dozens of records (as well as buying “unsolds” at the end of the auction) and shortly thereafter receive four or five boxes from Kurt