Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Vinyl Records

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/broadcaster/author Robin Ince (BBC Radio 4's 'The Infinite Monkey Cage', the Cosmic Shambles podcast network, his new book 'The Importance Of Being Interested') for a look at why vinyl records are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. And here's the playlist Alex and Robin came up with on this episode: https://bit.ly/SIF_VinylRecords

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It goes back to your local community. And Libro.fm is so awesome, I decided to partner with them. So if you use code SIFPOD at checkout, you get two audiobook credits for the price of one. You also support this podcast and my ability to make it at all. And then on top of all that, my guest today is the incredible comedian, broadcaster, writer Robin Ince. His new book is available as an audiobook from Libra.fm, narrated by Robin Ince himself. It's titled The Importance of Being Interested. If you like this show at all, you will love that book. So here is an awesome combo move you can make. Go to Libra.fm, pick your favorite bookstore, put Robin Ince's audiobook in your cart, use code SIFTPOD to get a whole second book on top of that

for free, and then, you know, everybody wins. You support this podcast, you support our guest Robin Ince, you support your local bookstore and your community, and you support this company that's trying to make audiobooks better. So that's my idea for you. That's how you can improve your audiobook experience. All you need to do is use code SIFTPOD at checkout and then get Robin Ince's book, plus whatever else you want, at Libro.fm. And then the very last thing I'll say about that, patrons of this show don't hear promotional messages like this. They just get to go straight to the episode because they make all the episodes possible. So if you want that experience and a ton of other benefits and to be someone who makes this entire podcast possible and makes it something that can keep

happening, please go to Sifpod.fun and become a patron. And thanks. Vinyl records. Known for being music. Famous for being flat. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why vinyl records are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. And I have a very special guest today. Robin Ince is here, the amazing comedian, broadcaster, podcaster, writer, so much more.

I'm just really happy he's here. It's great. You may know his stand-up from big national tours or from television. He has an amazing podcast network called Cosmic Shambles. He also co-hosts a BBC radio show with physicist Brian Cox. It's called The Infinite Monkey Cage. And if all that wasn't enough, Robin is a wonderful published author. His latest book is called The Importance of Being Interested. It's very funny essays and stories and you know, just plain arguments in favor of the kinds of things that you probably like if you like this podcast. It's an excellent book. I highly recommend it. And it's out now.

Robin is also in the middle of a UK tour where he's going to 100 bookshops to share the book and also support the bookshops all at once, which is awesome. So we will have a link about that. He's going to 100 bookshops across the UK. So if you're in the UK, he's probably he's probably going to be near you. I mean, it's not that huge of a country. So, you know, maybe that's a very American thing to say about it. We have Yellowstone and stuff, but you know what I mean. He's going to be close and I hope you'll check it out. Also, I've gathered all of our postal codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge the land that we taped on. I want to acknowledge that I recorded this on

the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Robin taped this in the UK, and as far as I know, that is outside of the usual context that we have for these. He's the first guest outside of North America that I've had on the show at all. So that's kind of a new thing. There we go. And I want to acknowledge that in North America and in many other locations, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about vinyl records. Vinyl records are a patron-chosen topic. Many thanks to John Hamilton for suggesting it and kind of making it happen. It's been a long drumbeat on that one. Also, thank you to Jeff Byrne for supporting it and cheerleading it.

I think vinyl records is an awesome topic for this show. We think so much about music and soundtracks and even, you know, comedy albums and everything else. We think so much about the content of those records. The actual physical things kind of get ignored in the process, and I'm thrilled we won't ignore them. I'm thrilled we get to find out about them today. Only other thing to say about this episode is that we had so much fun, Robin and I, we ended up generating a playlist. There's going to be a link to it in the show

links, and you will understand how that happened and why as you hear it. But I think that's really fun. This one comes with a little playlist for you, a little mixtape. But first, let's let you hear the show. So, please sit back or drop a needle onto a big disc-shaped thingy made out of oil. Because that is normal, apparently. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Robin Ince. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Robin Ince, it is so good to have you. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it.

We'd love to know how you feel about vinyl records. opinion of it would love to know how you feel about vinyl records well i was quite a vinyl addict uh i probably started off i was about 10 10 years old i think i was 10 or 9 i bought uh by a uk band from birmingham called the specials one of the the great and i know they've done reasonably well in the us as well i know that i know that i think they've got Freedom of the City of Seattle, as far as I remember. I might be wrong, but a tremendously good band. And I just started to obsess about music. And so I just, I used to have probably around two and a half thousand vinyl albums. And then the house that I lived in that was a basement flat flooded

with sewage. Oh. And that was the end of flooded with sewage oh and i that was the end of half of my record collection and it turned out the good half was on the lower shelf oh no do you have a theory why it was arranged that way easier reach it just turns out that a to d The A to D is not as good as E to J, and K to N is not as good as O to Z. So it meant that Morrissey's solo work survived, but the Smiths did not. And you can work that out, you know, however you wish.

But, yeah, it did seem... I mean, I realise some of it's a kind of, you know, psychosomatic. That that was destroyed obviously was greater than that which remained. And that's the way that we look at things. But yeah, it was quite a it's quite a weird time when you lose everything you own to sewage. And it's not as good as a song by Lowe. Lowe would have things we lost in the fire. Things that we lost in the poop is is not such a great kind of uh you know lo-fi hit and they're like but wait till you see the music video and you're like no i would really rather not see the music video actually you say john waters has directed it well this is going to be very

interesting poop then it's not really but this has me thinking uh and one of many great times to mention your new book the importance Importance of Being Interested. Please, everyone pick it up. But we just rearranged our books by color on the shelf. And so now I'm thinking, like, if there's a flood, maybe we lose all the purple and blue books. That's how we come out of it. And then red up top is okay. You know, that'll be an interesting experience.

I bet you had that nightmare didn't you every time you come up with a new way of ordering you find out it can never create order because whether it's music or whether it's books they are representations of the human mind which however much we wish had order does not yeah and i found myself getting angry at some of my books for having multi-colored covers which is not a thing to sweat at all but i was like why are you being hard to sort george saunders well i presume a second color is fine isn't it because that becomes the segue oh it's the third color isn't it which is uh a problem with the spine yeah that i'm then i'm writing letters to the publisher i'm like what have you done uh didn't you know I'm doing this? But that's wonderful. And you said around 10, you started racking up records. That was the

start of the collection. And that was everything as well. I was tremendously Catholic in my taste. So, you know, you would have, you know, records by Echo and the Bunny man on the sex pistols also next to records by you know meatloaf and the four tops and then i probably started becoming you know the the new musical express which was a kind of very important newspaper in the uk was uh for for music i i in the 80s overly obsessed with the independent label stuff kind kind of, again, the Smiths. Any band that was compared to the Smiths would be, you know, would be bought. Jangly rock, that kind of thing. And I would be, therefore, suspicious and wrongly suspicious of things like heavy metal, which now I enjoy a great deal.

I don't necessarily listen to it that much at home. I think a lot of the kind of metal stuff, like when I watch Metallica, the thing about watching someone like Metallica live is you can't stop smiling because it's preposterous it's wonderfully preposterous it's so loud it's so you know the you know monsters and puppets and all of these things um and so i always find that if i go and see a band like that i just smile all the way through because it's just so big. Maybe it's like me. I was initially led to believe that heavy metal bands, all the skulls and skeletons imagery was like scary. I was like, I was initially led to believe that they like meant it in a sad way. And then it turns out it's very fun, you know, like it's intense, but it's fun. And also the loveliest audiences. I mean, this is the interesting thing, because when I was growing up, it was the great band Motorhead.

And if anyone listening to this has not seen the memorial for Lemmy, which have you seen Lemmy's memorial that was done? No, I haven't. Right. So they're all there. And the final eulogy is from Dave Grohl. And it is utterly beautiful. And it kind of sums up so much about Lemmy and Motet and the kind of people who are fans. And by the end, he's pretty much in tears,

and he tells this beautiful story quite early on. He says the first time that he met Lemmy, he was – I can't remember which well-known drinking lounge this was for those of a rock bent. But he sees Lemmy, and he thinks, I've got to go up to Lemmy because this guy's a hero. This guy was a – and he goes up to him and he says, I'm really sorry, Lemmy. I do interrupt you and everything, but I hugely admire your music and I'm in a band. And he said the first thing that Lemmy ever said to him was I was sorry to hear about your friend that was the first

thing he said was about Kurt Cobain the loss of his life and he said you know just in that moment this should be the first thing that was in Lemmy's head as well when he met Dave Grohl you know by surprise and then it's just filled with these beautiful stories of things like he said Lemmy came to a gig and he says oh Lemmy come and meet my family and Lemmy goes and he's got a cigarette in one hand and he's got Jack Daniels big glass of Jack Daniels in the other and he walks into the dressing room and there is Dave Grohl's partner and his mum and in the corner is his baby and the moment that Lemmy sees that he just puts his cigarette out in the Jack Daniels and puts it aside and it's just all of these things and I think that you know

what whenever I've gone to gigs like that where you would you know you might think I wonder if it'll be a rather rough crowd and of course it's not you know all of the the rage and all of the love and all of the it's all of that is for the music. And people are so compassionate to each other, I think, very often, you know. And so they're always, whereas I've sometimes been to see some of my favourite kind of old country bands or Sufjan Stevens or someone like that. Was it Sufjan? Either way. And then you find out that there's horrible people in the audience.

And you go, or a Belle and Sebastian gig gig and you go, what are you doing here? This is kind music by kind people. And you're talking all the way through it as well. Get away. Get away. You know, whereas. Yeah, I had that experience at a Lord Huron concert. I don't think people know that band very well, but it's very, like, pleasant, folky stuff. And people were weird in

inside and outside of the gig didn't like it yeah yeah it's really annoying isn't it when your favorite band starts attracts the wrong people and you go well there's there needs to be some kind of quiz that's done beforehand to check about your you know your your ethics your belief about your humanity your altruism all all of those things, your empathy. Right. The most advanced bouncer in the world. Like, OK, sit down and join me, please. There's a little candle.

You know, you just hash it out. Yeah, your shoes are fine. Don't worry about the fact you're wearing sneakers. But we have got a few questions to ask you. Right. Your sartorial inelegance is not an issue, but your mind might be. Oh, man. I'm curious about your record collection now before we get into the information, because I'm so sorry about your loss of those chunks of the alphabet. But have you kept up like sticking to vinyl or have you moved on to I'll just throw it on Spotify or whatever?

I got it. I decided that once the vinyl was gone, I wasn't going to try and replace it. And I don't really, I've still got, as I said, about a thousand albums, something like that. And they're still there and I still listen to them. But then I mean, they are much more beautiful than CDs. Yeah, cool. And there is something more, but I almost feel like because I went through that important rite of passage, which was the people of my generation of 52, there was, you know, you would hear a song on the radio and you knew that their song was something about a pony with horns or whatever it was and you would go into the record shop. I heard a thing last night on the radio.

It was about a pony and it had horns and then there was a goblin in it as well. And that must be prog. Oh, okay, I'll go to the prog section. And that hunt, because I think I'd done all that hunting, it didn't feel so bad, the fact that I wasn't going to now try and return to that that hunt because i think i'd done all that hunting it didn't feel so bad the fact that i wasn't going to now try and return to that vinyl of my youth because it was such an important thing you know having a job on a saturday where you got your little pay packet and you knew

you could go to the record shop and you would pick up each piece of vinyl and go which is the one that i need to hear most and then you would sit on the train home and you would slide out the inner sleeve and you would go oh great lyrics or really great weird picture. Or you'd go, oh, no, it's just a boring white sleeve with nothing on it. I've been cheated. There's no further adventure when you slide out the record. And, you know, oh, I didn't know this was going to be a gatefold, you know, with some really crazy artwork in it and all of those things. And it was such, you know, all of that is it it's it's more than just the music it's a whole totemic kind of you know it's it's a ritual moment of

placing it on for the first time and then looking through the lyrics and then something like you know I remember buying murmur by REM and as far as I remember I think it only has if it has any lyrics on that inner sleeve it might only be of one song it might actually be of no songs and of course at that point michael stipe would just sit in the corner of the studio he was so shy so you think so you'd then have the game what is michael stipe singing about you know and what, and what is going on? And what does he mean by radio-free Europe? You know, and so all of that is part of ritual for me.

Yeah, because I didn't have vinyl as a teenager, but my fiancé had a record collection, so I've, like, engaged my way into it. But when I started seeing the records, I was like, oh, there's all this stuff with it. It's awesome. Like you get all that you get these entire gatefolds of, of lyrics and pictures of them and information about it. Uh, and I like that it's also occasionally cryptic, like you say, like this still doesn't help. Nope. Michael is going to sing what he sings. Sorry. There used to be a wonderful thing called Porky's Prime Cuts. If anyone looks at old vinyl, you will see that there's – I can't remember exactly why it's for. There's a little kind of scratched code, which appears to just be scratched in just on the out groove.

So if you have a look, there's a little kind of cut. And this guy, Porky, would actually – he would scratch in little inscrutable messages as well. What? So that when you got the album, there was also an inscrutable. I'm never sure how they did it in the process because it was replicated for each piece of vinyl. It didn't have to be individually scratched by this man called Porky,

but you would find little messages there that were left for you. This is where the messages really were television evangelists. It was never when you played it backwards. They were scratched into the out groove right the packaging's just on the floor laughing at them like ha ha ha the little record's moving like a little alligator still one of my favorite things what watching those i i've watched some of the kind of footage of those trials where for instance uh wasn't it judas priest when judas priest were um taken to court

because apparently you know that they were the reason that a a young lad had taken his life and and uh there was a bit that if you played a certain bit of it backwards i can't remember which song it was i mean weirdly enough i think it was a song like suicide solution which is is kind of like if you're gonna implicate them you could maybe implicate them actually from the the listing of the record whereas uh though in fact of course there's a lot more implications when someone does that and very rarely is it the music or those things that they're in and apparently if it played backwards you could hear uh rob halford going do it do it and so it was him saying do it apparently um and then you just see these bir Birmingham in England has one of my favourite accents.

I love that. And I can't remember which member of the band sat there and goes, well, we played the whole album backwards and this is what we've found so far. Something round here smells fishy. Look, Ma, this chair's broken. And he just went through all of the things that if you play backwards, these are the possible sentences you hear

and each one was much clearer than supposedly the instruction to do it wow now i'm wondering if that's almost built into the medium like you have this player and you're handling you're on your own end the placing of the needle and the arrangement of the speed and everything i wonder if that almost encouraged people to like see what other noises this thing could make like oh what if i go backwards maybe i'll find satan or what if i stand it on its head will i find heaven i guess is the opposite i don't know you know like what's gonna happen if i mess with this this tool that i purchased well that's the thing is yeah because in in the in the board days where we didn't have laptops or or uh you know a television in your bedroom whatever all you had was your records to work out i wonder what this sounds if you like Bored days where we didn't have laptops or, you know, a television in your bedroom or whatever.

All you had was your records to work out. I wonder what this sounds like if you played at 16 revolutions per minute. Ha, ha, ha, that's funny, isn't it? I wonder what it sounds like if you play at 78 revolutions, you know, all of those different things. I wonder what it's like backwards. Right, right. Well, and speaking of numbers,

I think we can get into the first chunk of the show about vinyl records. Because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called... The Stats Are Alive with the Sums of Numbers. the sums of numbers. And that name was submitted by at Danger Suave on Twitter. Thank you, at Danger Suave. We have a new name for this every week.

Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to Sip Pod on Twitter or to SipPod at gmail.com. But yeah, I got a couple numbers and stats here about records before we get into a couple takeaways about them. And the first number here is two. And two is the general number of forms of polyvinyl chloride. And polyvinyl chloride is a plastic polymer. It's made from oil. It's probably best known by the acronym PVC. But there's a rigid kind that gets turned into PVC pipe and parts of doors and windows and things. And then the softer kind gets turned into everything from sneakers to blood storage bags to vinyl records. They're made of a plastic.

Beautiful. Now, but what about colored vinyl? Do we know what that's made of? Because that was one of the big things as well. I bet in your fiance's collection, you know, there must be some green vinyl. I think I've got a babes in toyland which has got a very kind of murky blood red vinyl as well that's the next question for us what does what happens with pvc when you decide it must be uh colored as well l7 was heavy as bricks i think

was green i'll link about it if somebody knows i don't know how they do it i assume it's just like some kind of plastic trick we definitely there was like i got us a record as a gift and they were like you can get the special one that's a blue and white tie-dye color and i was like well obviously i'm getting that why would i if that's available you know let's go for it can i just say how much i enjoy your scientific uh explanation of the process it's probably some kind of trick yeah if only we would save so much time if when i'm on tour with brian cox i said brian stop talking about black holes the reason that the the singularity in the end of time just say you know so what happens when i go over the event

horizon it's probably some kind of trick i imagine that would be much better i'm going to encourage him it'll mean we've got a shorter show for when we do the American tour. Very handy. Yeah. If you ever need a guy to say, black holes are probably real freaky, I can just hop right in. You know, just bring me in there. They're real freaky. I can record it now. Then you just have it to play it. Which city are you in? Whereabouts are you? I'm now in New York, Brooklyn, New York. Oh, well, we'll be there. We're at the Beacon Theatre in, I think, April or May. So hopefully you can actually do it live. Oh, my God.

Well, I mean, don't have me do it. You might find that you've got another thousand people going, this is freaky because everyone does. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful when you start to find out about how some of the laws of physics lead to what on our scale of experience is utterly preposterous but which for the laws of physics is hey it's just the way things are i i love infinite monkey cage and and the things brian and others know about the edges of that stuff just the best

like it's the best how much they know and also is beyond what we currently know. I love it. Yeah, the death of the universe one that we did, that was the first one that we made during lockdown. And we had Brian Green, who I'm sure you know, is just such a great science communicator. And we had Katie Mack, who's written this wonderful book called The End of Everything About the Different Ways that the Universe Might End. And then also we had Eric I idol and steve martin which you know if you're gonna have you know which was just and i even today i still get people going

you know steve martin was that the steve martin yes it was the steve martin but it was the perfect mix because katie and brian and the other brian would you know take people into mind-boggling ideas about the big rip or the big crunch or other possible destinies of the universe. And then Steve Martin still has that immaculate timing for just pulling the rug from the strangeness of it all. Yeah. Was it irritating when he kept playing banjo over the speaking? Or did you guys kind of roll with it? Oh, I wish. I love his banjo playing so much. I know, it's so cool. I've got the Steve Martin Brothers, the album which is kind of,

it's one of those albums where they went, there's only about half an hour of stand-up left. Okay, well, side B, I'll play the banjo. Well, there's only a couple more numbers here, and one of them is, it's a recent modern development, it's 33 years. year. And one of them is, it's a recent modern development. It's 33 years. And 33 years is how many years CDs outsold vinyl records in the US. And I don't have UK numbers, actually. But we have now beginning and end dates for that situation. Because according to the Record Industry Association of America, CDs went to market in 1982.

By 1987, they started outselling records every year. But the new popularity of vinyl has flipped things over. And in 2020, records outsold CDs for the first time since the 1980s. Yes, I knew they'd win in the end. It is weird. that's interesting. It's definitely much because I would say in the UK, it feels like it was about 84, 85 where CDs became part of, really became part of the market.

Right on, yeah. And I wonder what year it was because I would imagine it would be later than 1987 in the UK, but I might be wrong. I remember the horror of I'd been away for it. In fact, when I was 19, I did a kind of tour of the United States. And when I came back, all the record shops seemed to have removed most of the vinyl. So the whole thing was quite artificial as well. It allowed more space for them to sell other stuff so it wasn't merely that people

said cds are easier i always feel that it was kind of thrust upon us by the industry because cds are rubbish you know they're really that that it's lovely when you watch those it the dual cases break all those little bits in the center all drop out those little broken bits of plastic they get horribly scratched you pull out the the the inner you out these little broken bits of plastic they get horribly scratched you you pull out the the the inner you know the inner sleeve element of it with the liner that that all gets scuffed up yeah so well done to vinyl for finally showing the way and also of course the ultimate truth probably is that the real thing is no one believes that music's solid anymore do they it's gone back to being an ethereal thing that exists in the air yeah if i if i want

convenience now i just stream it and then if i want to have like a beautiful physical version of it i'll get a couple of records a year yeah and so yeah i think that's what everybody's been doing i'm not in the room where i keep my vinyl but i have realized i've got a load of vinyl just next to me and i'm wondering what i've got actually because this is uh um i've got uh diamond dogs gatefold sleeve diamond dogs a bowie great yeah uh what else i've got the auteurs a load someone must have sent me a load of auteurs vinyl that's great uh i'm kind of intrigued actually because there's things that i've what was this i i get given things and sometimes then i'm away the whole time.

This is, oh, here we go. This is a great, I'd forgotten I had this. And I think this is Gold Vinyl Limited Edition, a fantastic band called Pair Ubu. I don't know if you know Pair Ubu. No, I don't. And this was their soundtrack to the low-budget movie Carnival of Souls, the rather legendary movie Carnival of Souls,

which is in many ways a kind of precursor stylistically to things like Night of the Living Dead. So there, that's probably my favourite bit of vinyl in that pile. If you've never seen... Have you ever seen Carnival of Souls? No, I don't know it. Oh, it's such an interesting movie. And it was Herc Hervey who made it, who never made anything else again. It's the only movie he made. It's freely available now because

whoever owned the copyright if anyone did is long forgotten so you'll find it on so many different platforms and you will definitely watch it and go oh i see some of where george a romero's kind of the the the spooky almost cinema verite of the uh of the advance of the zombies there's a little bit of that in carnival of souls as well oh i'll i'll link about it i'm gonna check it out wow in carnival of souls as well oh i'll i'll link about it i'm gonna check it out wow and uh and there's just one more number here about records which is 108 and i'm sorry there's another u.s sales figure but it's the the ones i could find 108 is the jump in u.s vinyl record sales from the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2021 it more than double that's interesting yeah and uh they say cnbc says that record companies sold 9.2 million records in the first half of 2020

19.2 million in the first half of 2021 and one one reason they think might be contributing is that everybody had time to sit at home and listen to records because of the pandemic they could just you know not everybody could stay home but people who could were like well if i'm finally in my living room all the time let's throw some some vinyl on let's do it well it is isn't it we live in such a kind of consumer culture where we're so busy buying stuff we we frequently forget to actually ever look at it yes and that bit of suddenly being kind of interned in our own attics or wherever we might have been and going let's have a look at all of this stuff that i've got right i think that's

great like i have these canned foods i haven't eaten and i have these old books and records i haven't touched like what a big collection of tinned meats i've got what a strange thing to have collected but yeah from here there are three big takeaways for the episode about vinyl records, and we can get into them. Starting with takeaway number one. Vinyl records exist today because the disc format defeated Thomas Edison. Oh. And this is a history of recorded music thing.

oh and this is a this is a like history of recorded music thing there was a point where there was a battle between disc shaped music and cylinder shaped music because edison was way into cylinders that's how you want to do it that's great i love those cylinders they have immediately you feel you're at a seance when you hear one of those that is not me you you don't just feel that that was a voice that was recorded you feel that was a voice and a soul that was trapped inside the cylinder because i'm trying to think i've definitely heard one of someone that i forget it's some old poet who i i was absolutely amazed to find out that there was a recording of of his voice i wish i could remember who it was because it's fascinating some of the people who are recording some who who aren't like for instance george orwell who you would think he

did loads of radio broadcasts in the 1940s during the second world war you know he was on many things but there's no recording of george orwell's voice oh nobody kept no one knows what he sounded like man you know apart from those who were alive then and none of them were good enough impersonators to say well george orwell sounded a little bit like this right you have to establish that the person's an amazing impressionist. And then otherwise it's like, no, you're just doing you. Forget it. But yeah, there's a fun, like, kind of struggle here at the turn of the 19th and 20th century.

One idea was to do disc-shaped media for recording music. One idea was to do disc-shaped media for recording music. Mainly came from an inventor named Emil Berliner, who was born in what's now Germany in 1851, moved to the U.S., became an inventor, and invented a lot of things. He did everything from pioneering acoustic tile to writing a popular rhyming children's book about public health. writing a popular rhyming children's book about public health. Also, he and his son built a working prototype of a helicopter in 1922 and demonstrated it to the U.S. military. So he was doing lots of different things.

I like that. That's a kind of Da Vinci quality of a life, isn't it? Yeah, even kind of copying Da Vinci. Like, hey, that's his thing. Back off. And then Berliner, his biggest invention probably for the public and in popular consciousness was the gramophone, which debuted in 1888. And it was the same general principle as Thomas Edison's phonograph. But the biggest difference was that there were flat discs that the music and information was recorded onto and played off of.

flat discs that the music and information was recorded onto and played off of. Cool. And our big source here is a book called Perfecting Sound Forever, An Oral History of Recorded Music. And that's by Greg Milner, spelled A-U-R-A-L, oral. But he says that when the gramophone came out, Thomas Edison was basically opposed to it, because he had done the phonograph in 1877. And in the entire development of it, he spent a lot of time experimenting with all sorts of different media, including flat discs. And he was just dead convinced that cylinders were the way to go, in particular the wax cylinder, which he put out in 1888, the exact same year. So he was pretty upset that somebody else was

doing it totally differently. He was confident he had the best sound quality and the best style of recording so it'd be interesting to know what the real truth was because of course it's a bit like the beatamax versus vhs uh malarkey where you know anyone because my dad he bought a beatamax because he'd read all the stuff everyone knew beatamax was better it didn't go around so many it didn't wear out the tape so much didn't go around so many cogs etc but no vhs won out on that one and both now are in a strange archaic graveyard which should you show a child that that is how you used to watch films at home they would laugh in your face you might as well be showing them an old plow yeah man i i've rewound so much tape and and now just everything streams from any flat surface in my home it's amazing yeah no it is it is it is an incredible thing and you can still get i know that i think for my generation people can be quite

kind of snarky about all that but i i still think the accessibility of so much music is is and then you can try and lead people to you know if you use social media not just to argue tribally but you also try and use it to actually go hey everyone there's great band you should listen to them you know that is uh and then you get caught in these wonderful kind of you know it's like if you go on spotify and then you find one weird band and then of course it says people who like this weird band like this weird band and then you just keep going and keep going and you you start off you know listening to dolly parton and by the end of it you're listening to a band like idols you know and it's uh it's a great game of tag yeah that i i cds were so big in my childhood and And then I remember us getting a CD burner and also finding out that the community college library had CDs that I could just take and burn and then get back.

And it felt like an Internet style opening of the entire world. It's like, oh, not every experience of hearing an album has to cost fifteen dollars now. I can just do it. It's amazing. But I love that. So folks get just do it. It's amazing. But I love that. So folks get excited about it. It's good. You don't have to do these weird cylinders and discs anymore.

It's really nice. In fact, I'll recommend a Dolly Parton song, just in case some people don't know this Dolly Parton song. Go and find the song The Bridge. I'm not going to tell you anything about it. It's a reasonably early dolly parton song it is one of those perfect country and western songs of of of melancholy and love and all of those things and uh yeah so there we go that's a start that i i challenge all listeners to use that as their starting point and then maybe you can find out at the end of the

day the different places they can tell you where they ended up, what the final song of the day was, if they start with the bridge by Dolly Parton. Oh yeah, that'd be really fun. We'll have a link to the song in the show and also just put it on Twitter and reply with what you get. That'd be awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Let the algorithm lead you. It'll be great. But and as far as the these songs on these cylinders and discs go, Edison worked really hard with a lot of different materials and settled on wax cylinders, but also his cylinders lost in the market, because the discs were generally cheaper to make. And also Berliner did not produce a bunch of them, but a company called the Victor Talking Machine Company that became famous for the Victrola and a bunch of early recorded music stuff. Their discs were cheaper to make than the cylinders, so they were cheaper for the public. They also held twice as much music. They held four minutes versus Edison's two. So I would imagine, I don't know how long that Dolly Parton song is, but probably one could go on the disc and one could not go on the cylinder. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm trying to think. It's one of those beautifully brief songs as well. It probably doesn't quite squeeze onto the two minutes. I'm trying to think what does squeeze onto the two minutes. I know that the Smith's B side, I Keep Mine Hidden, I think is one minute, 57 seconds. So you might be able to squeeze that one. Oh, yeah, an Edison-friendly song.

There's Panic on on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Carlisle. I'm afraid that's two minutes, two seconds. You lose the final notes. Just at home, like there's gotta be more cylinder. There's gotta be. Yeah. But yeah, and then there's an interesting thing

in the early, early 1900s edison sees this competitor with discs and just decides to go all in on cylinders and from 1901 to 1909 his company just keeps doing more cylinders eventually they achieve a cylinder that can do the full four minutes the same as the discs but in the meantime, the Victor company sells tons of discs, signs people like Enrico Caruso to contracts, also rolls out the Victrola machine and becomes kind of the dominant recorded music playing company in the US and elsewhere for a while. And in the end, Edison's subordinates in 1908 start researching disc-shaped technology without his knowledge,

because they think he might be upset that they're looking into it. And then later on, Edison caves, and in 1912, they start selling Edison diamond disk phonographs, which are marketed as a better disk, but he has switched to this thing that other people were doing. And like you say, it's unclear whether one was better than the other. It's possible cylinders are better. Nobody really knows for sure. But there was this brief battle where instead of vinyl records, we almost got vinyl cylinders or something like it. Yeah, storage-wise, it's a disaster, isn't it? It seems really inconvenient. Yeah.

The flatness of vinyl is a useful thing. Yeah, they'd be like cans of soup for every album that you want to hear. That's terrible. I don't want a pantry of this. Yeah. I found another one here. Brand New Ancients. That's a fantastic album there on vinyl by Kay Tempest, who is an amazing poet.

So there's another recommendation. That's all my vinyl that I have up here. The colored record I talked about buying was the album Free Love by Sylvan Asso. Great electronic. People should check it out. We should, we should just do it. I'll make a playlist after this. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. I'll put it together. But, and, uh, and yeah, so that's the, the upshot of Edison's situation. Just one last thing about him is that apparently his hearing got worse with age, but he was also still working on trying to make recorded music technology the best it

could be. And this author, Greg Milner, says that once Edison's hearing started failing, he started testing phonograph quality by biting the wooden part of the machine because, quote, his teeth became a de facto stylus, letting him feel the vibrations with his body, end quote. And Edison became convinced that if he couldn't hear as well, he could just, like, skip the bones in the inner part of the ear and go straight to feeling the vibrations and getting a sense of whether the machine was better or not. He had employees, too, so they probably solved that situation. But yeah, he was deeply committed to it.

But that's a cool image of the Sony Walkman, which is more like a kind of dental brace rather than placing it in the ears. You just pop that in and you play the music through your teeth. Yeah, if Invisalign gets into the business. I don't know if that's in the UK. Yeah, they are, yeah. Okay, cool, yeah.

We're inventing so much stuff during this show. I think we're going to be millionaires. Yeah, this is all copyright, trademark, copyright, trademark. I've done it. Legal mastery. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back.

I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year.

Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. But and two more takeaways for the show. Let's do takeaway number two. Before records were made of vinyl, they were made of secretions from Beatles.

And this is a thing I found out mainly about a substance called shellac that i had never looked into until researching this it turns out it's it's a natural substance from bugs and there was a band called shellac as well but who was in the band shellac that i can't remember at this moment yeah i've heard of them at all and when i try to hold this in my head i think of the band the beetles too so there's a lot of oh yeah that's nice going on let me uh you keep going and i'm gonna i'm gonna check who's who's in shellac because i'm certain that was a good band there's a bunch of sources here the main ones are the new yorker and the atlantic and then also the yale university libraries have an amazing page about their collection of shellac records but we we were just talking about this cylinders versus discs battle that led to discs, led to records.

But records weren't made of vinyl until decades later. It wasn't really until the late 1940s that a vinyl record was common. And so for about 50 years, we had records made of other stuff, and most of them were made of shellac. had records made of other stuff, and most of them were made of shellac. And it turns out shellac is it's a natural plastic like material. And it comes from a set of species of beetles, which are called lack insects. The lack is just spelled LAC, and it's what they secrete. And laborers will like harvest this off of trees. And the bugs mostly live in India, Bangladesh, and some southeast asian countries like thailand so out in south asia there are beetles that were making the material

that became like most records for several decades and i can now say that i should have known that i don't know how i forgot this it was steve albini is one of the members of Shellac, who was also producer of Nirvana and PJ Harvey and many others as well. Oh, cool. So there we go. That's the Shellac thing. But I have to tell everyone I cheated. I could have pretended that it came back to me, but I used my phone. Now I'm wondering if that band got its name from like, those guys being big music heads

and music nerds, you know, like, I feel like it's a reference to records used to be made out of this. I'm a brilliant thinker about music. We'll produce everyone later. I'm Steve Albini. Perfect Steve Albini impression. We don't need tape of him. It's unlike Orwell. But, uh, and yeah, and so these Beatles, they secrete this resin. It can be turned into a polymer that was like soft and malleable in a way where they could make records. But shellac records are heavier than vinyl records. Also, they shatter if you do, if they're like bumped at all.

They're incredibly fragile. They were still like the dominant record basically from the 20s into the late 40s. And then for a couple of reasons, vinyl took over. One of them is that plastic technology got better. Also, it's lighter and less breakable. And then also World War II happened. And most of this shellac came from countries in South Asia that was a harder place to reach when like Imperial Japan was growing and the war was happening. And so apparently there was a US military company

called V-Disc that printed records for the troops. And they were one of the first groups to start printing records made out of vinyl, because with no shellac availability, that was easier to do. And it turned out it was easier to make long playing records, better known as LPs out of vinyl as well. So that also shifted the whole medium. Talking of the fragility of shellac and also possibly the fragility of vinyl, there was, it used to be a guy who I toured with on a few occasions in the early nineties, who went by the name of Woody Bop Muddy. And he had also been in a band called Now The Native Hipsters, who did a wonderful song called Look, There Goes Concord Again. And he used to do a show called Record Graveyard,

where on this ancient old record player, he would play various pop hits from the 70s, 80s, et cetera, and the audience would have to decide whether it went to record heaven or record graveyard and if it went to record graveyard he would nail it onto a plank of wood and smash it into pieces wow every time great act and the only reason the act stopped working was of course eventually the cds it's i i think it was in direct conjunction with the fact that somewhere in the late 90s, people just kind of went, nah, you've got to put on CDs, and it just doesn't work with CDs.

That's not the way it is. But it was a wonderful act, and again, another band that if you can find anything by now the native hipsters, interesting kind of late 70s new wave band, and also very early doing sampling at a time when there wasn't much sampling as well they did bits and pieces of that as well wow well i think another one for the playlist is great and uh there's something about destroying records that's fun right and it's amazing that cds it's intensely not fun it just feels like you're like damaging pc

equipment but but records it's like it's like you're smashing a guitar like a like a rock star like yeah i broke it i'm awesome yeah that would be i bet there is some footage somewhere because i know he definitely did some tv but it was a wonderful thing to be inside the room and watch people become sometimes enraged because sometimes he would smash their favourite. He would go against the public's decision, like the true kind of pirate figure that he was, and he would destroy it. I once saved a record by a band called Altered Images, a fantastic band from Glasgow. We were playing Dundee, I think, that night.

We had quite a small audience, and he went to go and smash up an album of theirs called Pinky Blue, and I still have that because it's a altered images so it was on the a shelf that was higher as you know right the uh f to j shelf um above the water table yeah yeah i still have pinky blue by altered images yeah oh that's great they did a great song called they did a lot of great songs actually uh i could be happy and happy birthday are um very good places to start so there's more for the playlist as it builds and builds perfect yeah it's still one of my favorite when i don't know if you've ever done that that bit where you try and work out what your favorite city is in terms

of for music and uh and i did this uh because during lockdown you know i just put up playlists and mucked around with stuff and i i did a playlist for the the the city of glasgow and uh i can't find a city that has as many there's bands that i sometimes love even more from other cities but never as many bands one city thing i'm now remembering because i'm from around chicago and now i'm remembering one of my main touchstones for records was that there was a never as many bands. One city thing I'm now remembering because I'm from around Chicago and now I'm remembering one of my main touchstones for records was that there was a Chicago White Sex baseball game where they did disco demolition night and destroyed a bunch of records on the field was the idea. It was a promotion where like, it's a doubleheader, come to the first game,

then we'll destroy a bunch of disco records on the field because we hate disco. And I later learned it was kind of an anti-gay thing, but at the time it was just explosions to me as a kid. But they were like, they attempted to destroy the records and then play the second game. But like burning and blowing up records is so toxic and so noxious. And there are so many fumes that they had to forfeit the second game because they just couldn't play on the field anymore. They'd done this horrible thing there. Before the bonus episode, we got one more main takeaway for the main episode. So here it is. Takeaway number three.

The Voyager Golden record recently became a vinyl record. That's nice. Yeah. There's now a way you can get a vinyl version of it at home if you want to but also we have the story here of why it was uh originally not a vinyl record mainly so it could be in space it's such a great i i talked to um andrean who of course was the uh artistic director creative director of the golden record and um then worked a great deal with carl sagan and then of course was also married to carl sagan and she said it was so interesting when they put together if anyone

listening if you've never heard the the golden record or looked at the playlist such a fabulous mix of kind of you know great classical music interesting kind of uh love songs from all around the world and from very very many different traditions and cultures you know anthropologically it covers you know as much as it can and she says you know when they had that first meeting with the big shots who kind of came in with the pocket protectors and the pens and all of that kind of stuff as well they couldn't understand why haven't we got frank sinatra why aren't we sending you know his music into space and it was like well no we got we've got a chuck berry song there

and uh and then there's a lovely thing about it which as well is that i can't remember who i was talking to the other day who was who was eulogizing talking about how great the the golden record is and she went yeah there's even a a message message from the Secretary General of the UN on it. Now, unfortunately, this is where the problem arises. You might know about this anyway, but the Secretary General of the UN was a guy called Kurt Waldheim, who not long after he would have recorded that message saying, please come and visit our planet, was found out to be quite an ardent Nazi. So looking back, when you're sending your records into space, just have a double check on who quite an ardent Nazi. So looking back, when you're sending your records into space,

just have a double check on who's an ardent Nazi. To be honest, no one knew at the time. It was kind of suddenly revealed. But you just go, oh, has it gone into space? Yeah, it has. Our welcome message is from an ardent Nazi. Yeah, this was not a great idea looking back. But it's got so many beautiful things on it

and all of those lovely images that you can look at. Yeah, I love. And, you know, talking to ann about it now she is such a i mean that was actually i think in in the book that i've just written that was one of the hardest chapters to cut down when i was talking about i can't remember whether i think it must have been in the space exploration chapter it might not be but so many interesting things about our desire to speak to extraterrestrials and what is the message that we want to send them yeah and uh and so talking to ann about that is just you know it's always a delight it's a group of people that are relatively recent like these probes went out in 1977 and then the people who worked on it are are in our time people like robin have talked to him and found out about it it's

amazing yeah it's just really one of my favorite stories actually is, do you know Frank Drake who came up with the Drake equation? No. The Drake equation is basically kind of what is needed for there to be life on a planet. Oh, cool. So it's all of the different kind of requirements of a planet. And Frank Drake worked for seti search for extraterrestrial intelligence and i i was talking to the guy who kind of heads it up now seth shuster and there's

just a really lovely story about the fact that frank drake spent a lot of his life listening out for hoped for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence but he also in his downtime would go and work on kind of uh nighttime telephone lines for people in distress and i think there's something really beautiful about listening out for these you know this thing that would change our perception of who we are this this the idea of listing out but not forgetting that while we're listing out for life that may or may not exist there is life all around us some of which is going through distress some of which needs our help and the fact that frank drake who is i think still alive as far as i know he was doing both he was reaching out towards the sky and he was also reaching out for

the people in in his neighborhood and making sure they were okay i love that so much it's really beautiful i love finding i mean that was one of the things is that's one of the reasons that i like writing books because i hate editing books but i love writing them uh is just that you just keep coming across so many beautiful stories about you know humanity and its possibilities and and especially in the last few years that you've had you know in the u.s politically and that we're going through in the in the uk at the moment you know had you know in the u.s politically and that we're going through in the in the uk at the moment you know sometimes you have to work a little bit harder to really remind yourself that to be a curious creature has has many excitements to it as well and and many

joys uh within its fascination as well as that dark side that's dead on man and this record to me is one of those points of light there i don't know because this uh for one thing we'll we'll just link to it people you can buy a vinyl copy of the voyager golden record if you want it's a three disc set and then there's a case around it it's 98 and it it partly happened because a company called Osma Records did a Kickstarter and they asked for $200,000 to fund it and they got $1.3 million. Because people are that excited about this artifact of humans saying like, here we are, please be friends with us. Apologies about the one voiceover we didn't know you know like like uh but uh joke aside like it's it's uh i don't know it's a it's a little touchstone and testament of how we want to be to the entire universe it's cool yeah it's like rusty schweikart i did you know rusty is a apollo 9 is that yeah

astronaut and he's great and he you know often talks about for him it's such an important thing that we reach out and that we try you know he he sees very much the kind of the the earth mother earth he sees as being something which is there is a point where we grow up to a certain age that we must leave our mother and he says you know he wants to make sure that we are a species that is good enough to be invited to the kind of interplanetary council, wherever that might be. And I love talking to him about those things because on Apollo 9, and that's what I love, talking about the golden record, that when we are long gone, when as a species we are no more,

somewhere in space will be this very small, you know, Voyager could probably sit in almost anyone, however small the room is that you're sitting in now. It could probably fit Voyager. It's a pretty, you know, both of them are not a vast size. And the fact that, you know, they were the fastest things, I know something, I'm trying to remember what's beaten it now. There is something that's beaten it.

But the two fastest vehicles made by human beings, speeding out through space, getting to the edge of the solar system and continuing on. And as you said, somewhere on that, perhaps it will never be touched. Perhaps it will never be played. But we know that Bach is traveling through space and Chuck Berry is traveling through space. And all of these kind of fossils of what it is to be a creative creature is traveling through space. And also in order for it to travel through space, it became something that was super hard for any of us to just hear on Earth.

Like this final pressing was in 2017 for the 40th anniversary. But we'll have pictures from a JPL, that's the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They have like a gallery of photos of people making these because they made a set of eight copies, but it's a copper record with an aluminum casing and then gold plating and i the sources were a little unclear but i don't know how if you could actually play it on a regular record player i think would be very difficult and then since then nasa made ways for people to hear it they published a cd-rom in 1992 they put pieces of it on soundcloud in 2015 which is very fun to me it's it's like a uh underground rapper you know doing that it's

great um but also i want to have have all the astronauts um put up because they should all put up the playlist that in particular you know when people did just take up cassettes, I would love to have a playlist of all of the different astronauts, the music they took into space. I was actually was just doing one of these about Apollo 12. And I guess Pete Conrad on the mission played a lot of Elvis and a lot of Dusty Springfield. Yeah. Which is great. That seems like good moon music to me. Yeah.

Which is great. That seems like good moon music to me. Yeah, there was a nice, when we were doing a Christmas show that was kind of one of our science celebration jamboree things, and we had the UK's first astronaut, Helen Sharman, on. And I happened to also book a brilliant singer-songwriter called Tanita Tikaram, who started in the late 80s, very, very young. Tanita Tikaram, who started in the late 80s, very, very young. And they'd never met, but the song that Helen took up to space with her was one of Tanita's songs.

So it was this really nice meeting of the two of them, this beautiful song about looking down, the thoughts on the world. And, in fact, I know I think Samantha Cristoforetti as well has taken Tanita's work with her. And, obviously i think samantha christopher reti as well has taken tanita's work with her and obviously chris hadfield is recorded in space as well which is magnificent yeah but it uh this is probably not a novel observation but maybe music makes space more human less scary we just wanted we want music up there with us right away and ahead of us with the probes like we'll send them ahead you know to get the party started it's great well i think it is it's it's that sense of human achievement that is something that you

can actually package in it you know you can't take the great kind of pieces of architecture again like rusty took with him rolled up on tiny little scrolls various quotations from great works of philosophy and great novels etc because he wanted to take with him when he went on apollo 9 he wanted to take with him some of you know human some human achievement yeah a lot of highlights yeah the words and the pictures and everything it's great Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Robin Ince for sharing all sorts of joy and humor and sweet tunes with me. Really cool. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now.

If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the possibility of vinyl lifeforms on Titan. Visit SIFPod.fun for that bonus show with Robin Ince, for a library of more than five dozen other bonus shows with all sorts of guests, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring vinyl records with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways.

vinyl records with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, we have records today because the disc format defeated Thomas Edison. Takeaway number two, before records were made of vinyl, they were made of secretions from Beatles. And takeaway number three, the Voyager Golden record was not a vinyl record until very recently. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guest. He's great. Robin Ince's new book is entitled The Importance of Being Interested, Adventures in Scientific Curiosity. That book is on sale now everywhere. Also, if you want it as an audiobook, I highly recommend this podcast's partner for audiobooks. They're called Libro.fm.

If you go to Libro.fm, you can use code SIFPA to check out to get two audiobook credits for the price of one. So you can get this book, and then you can get a whole other book for free. So you can get this book and then you can get a whole nother book for free. And then if you're in the UK, Robin Ince is in the middle of a tour of 100 bookshops in that country, which probably means he's coming to you. We will have a link for you to find your tour stop to, you know, you know, meet Robin Ince things, in particular, The Infinite Monkey Cage, which is an incredible BBC radio show that also does live tours and events. And also Robin Ince's podcast network, Cosmic Shambles. I think one of my favorite shows there is the show Book Shambles, co-hosted by Josie Long, with amazing authors and great stuff. Many research sources this week. Here are some key

ones. I got to read a fascinating book in the prep for this. It's called Perfecting Sound Forever, An Oral History of Recorded Music. That's A-U-R-A-L. And that's written by Greg Milner. Just amazing stuff. Also an excellent article in The New Yorker about records and streaming music and the overall world impact of that. That's written by Alex Ross. Also leaned on the Yale University Libraries and University of Illinois Libraries for info on the history and science of shellac. Several pieces about the Voyager Golden Record, in particular one written for The Atlantic by Marina Koren. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven

by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show about the vinyls of Titan. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then.