Of course I always play Bowie, it's on Deezer and I have that many boxed sets of CDs that it's just silly. But today I'm playing the album, in fact it's the same piece that of vinyl that I bought in 1972 with my limited allowance. I pulled it off the shelf yesterday as my sister from Brisbane was in town and I thought it would be cute to play her the selfsame black disc that so pervaded my sense of self when we were a familial denucleated pair of siblings left alone in the house after our mother died and our father was working overseas.
It was her sixteenth birthday party that comes to mind first. I suppose I was thirteen and the party was truly out of hand. The cars of all the strangers that we had invited and all the strangers they had invited blocked the little street of Kings Grove in Barton and went all the way around the corner. The pot smoke was so thick that you couldn't see your way through the rooms or the back garden.
Side two of Ziggy Stardust was being played at the maximum register on the Bakelite knob of the HMV record player with optional stereo speaker.
Then the police came, in five black Mariahs with potentially hostile intent as the neighbours battened down and rang for help.
Thus my first negotiation with authority was as the young teenage householder with the very glittery uniformed and respectable senior constable who came to the door to assess wether to forcibly close down the proceedings ... my elder sister having become incapacitated. He was very polite and ... sensible. I was overtly cooperative and not at all encouraging of a confrontation. He chose to wait outside with his squadron of cars and constables while there was a hurried exodus from the house.
As the people left they divested themselves of packages of silver foil and curious pipes into the roses and over the fences into the neighbours gardens. As " Hang on to yourself" played a wave of Ford Cortinas and BSA Bantams left our street and headed off into the night leaving a diehard group of fifty or so in the house who were too wasted to care wether the police took them away or not.
It was too much for me, when the police cars then left in the wake of the major group of party goers I needed to go and find somewhere alone to have an anxiety attack.
Suffragette city was playing full loud still when the kindly neighbour walking his dog came across me lying down on a grass path in a field behind the house on the dark night. It was very hard to explain what I was doing there.
The party people in the home became gradually immobile in piles of tangled limbs and I trod amongst them until daylight vainly trying to rescue things of value.
Sunrise showed a wreckaged childhood home and very unfortunate odours. Our wonderfully solicitous neighbour had gathered together all the packages and paraphernalia and presented it to me over the fence "in case the owners came back for them" and searching the trampled rose garden kept our hippy friends stoned for weeks.
The really remarkable thing about this album I'm playing now is how simply brilliant it sounds. I'm using a spindleless Roksan Xerxes turntable with an Ortofon Cadenza Black Moving Coil cartridge through a Rega IOS Phono Stage.
There is a PS Audio BHK pre and power Amplifier into a pair of Monitor Audio Platinum PL500 loudspeakers, and yes, this system is a McClaren F1 by comparison to the Austin A35-like HMV autoloader gramophone with 78rpm option that gouged the record that night in 1972. But the presence, the actual absence of surface noise, and the feeling of a glam Bowie singing in my room and echoing across the ages is is simply amazing. A journey in music, time, and space.
Playing Sufragette City though ... I am once again lying on the ground on a path in an field trying to control my breathing and bursting anxieties of bedrugged adolescence as the neighbours dog finds me. I'm not sure listening to it like this is helping me move on ... but it is amazing ...
Opinions
Post truamatic stress and My First Vinyls ... Ziggy Stardust
More than anything this is the one album that was the backdrop to my dysfunctional teenage years in Cambridge and Manchester.
I'm playing the vinyl today for the first time in ... actually years.
Of course I always play Bowie, it's on Deezer and I have that many boxed sets of CDs that it's just silly. But today I'm playing the album, in fact it's the same piece that of vinyl that I bought in 1972 with my limited allowance. I pulled it off the shelf yesterday as my sister from Brisbane was in town and I thought it would be cute to play her the selfsame black disc that so pervaded my sense of self when we were a familial denucleated pair of siblings left alone in the house after our mother died and our father was working overseas.
It was her sixteenth birthday party that comes to mind first. I suppose I was thirteen and the party was truly out of hand. The cars of all the strangers that we had invited and all the strangers they had invited blocked the little street of Kings Grove in Barton and went all the way around the corner. The pot smoke was so thick that you couldn't see your way through the rooms or the back garden.
Side two of Ziggy Stardust was being played at the maximum register on the Bakelite knob of the HMV record player with optional stereo speaker.
Then the police came, in five black Mariahs with potentially hostile intent as the neighbours battened down and rang for help.
Thus my first negotiation with authority was as the young teenage householder with the very glittery uniformed and respectable senior constable who came to the door to assess wether to forcibly close down the proceedings ... my elder sister having become incapacitated. He was very polite and ... sensible. I was overtly cooperative and not at all encouraging of a confrontation. He chose to wait outside with his squadron of cars and constables while there was a hurried exodus from the house.
As the people left they divested themselves of packages of silver foil and curious pipes into the roses and over the fences into the neighbours gardens. As " Hang on to yourself" played a wave of Ford Cortinas and BSA Bantams left our street and headed off into the night leaving a diehard group of fifty or so in the house who were too wasted to care wether the police took them away or not.
It was too much for me, when the police cars then left in the wake of the major group of party goers I needed to go and find somewhere alone to have an anxiety attack.
Suffragette city was playing full loud still when the kindly neighbour walking his dog came across me lying down on a grass path in a field behind the house on the dark night. It was very hard to explain what I was doing there.
The party people in the home became gradually immobile in piles of tangled limbs and I trod amongst them until daylight vainly trying to rescue things of value.
Sunrise showed a wreckaged childhood home and very unfortunate odours. Our wonderfully solicitous neighbour had gathered together all the packages and paraphernalia and presented it to me over the fence "in case the owners came back for them" and searching the trampled rose garden kept our hippy friends stoned for weeks.
The really remarkable thing about this album I'm playing now is how simply brilliant it sounds. I'm using a spindleless Roksan Xerxes turntable with an Ortofon Cadenza Black Moving Coil cartridge through a Rega IOS Phono Stage.
There is a PS Audio BHK pre and power Amplifier into a pair of Monitor Audio Platinum PL500 loudspeakers, and yes, this system is a McClaren F1 by comparison to the Austin A35-like HMV autoloader gramophone with 78rpm option that gouged the record that night in 1972. But the presence, the actual absence of surface noise, and the feeling of a glam Bowie singing in my room and echoing across the ages is is simply amazing. A journey in music, time, and space.
Playing Sufragette City though ... I am once again lying on the ground on a path in an field trying to control my breathing and bursting anxieties of bedrugged adolescence as the neighbours dog finds me. I'm not sure listening to it like this is helping me move on ... but it is amazing ...
Of course I always play Bowie, it's on Deezer and I have that many boxed sets of CDs that it's just silly. But today I'm playing the album, in fact it's the same piece that of vinyl that I bought in 1972 with my limited allowance. I pulled it off the shelf yesterday as my sister from Brisbane was in town and I thought it would be cute to play her the selfsame black disc that so pervaded my sense of self when we were a familial denucleated pair of siblings left alone in the house after our mother died and our father was working overseas.
It was her sixteenth birthday party that comes to mind first. I suppose I was thirteen and the party was truly out of hand. The cars of all the strangers that we had invited and all the strangers they had invited blocked the little street of Kings Grove in Barton and went all the way around the corner. The pot smoke was so thick that you couldn't see your way through the rooms or the back garden.
Side two of Ziggy Stardust was being played at the maximum register on the Bakelite knob of the HMV record player with optional stereo speaker.
Then the police came, in five black Mariahs with potentially hostile intent as the neighbours battened down and rang for help.
Thus my first negotiation with authority was as the young teenage householder with the very glittery uniformed and respectable senior constable who came to the door to assess wether to forcibly close down the proceedings ... my elder sister having become incapacitated. He was very polite and ... sensible. I was overtly cooperative and not at all encouraging of a confrontation. He chose to wait outside with his squadron of cars and constables while there was a hurried exodus from the house.
As the people left they divested themselves of packages of silver foil and curious pipes into the roses and over the fences into the neighbours gardens. As " Hang on to yourself" played a wave of Ford Cortinas and BSA Bantams left our street and headed off into the night leaving a diehard group of fifty or so in the house who were too wasted to care wether the police took them away or not.
It was too much for me, when the police cars then left in the wake of the major group of party goers I needed to go and find somewhere alone to have an anxiety attack.
Suffragette city was playing full loud still when the kindly neighbour walking his dog came across me lying down on a grass path in a field behind the house on the dark night. It was very hard to explain what I was doing there.
The party people in the home became gradually immobile in piles of tangled limbs and I trod amongst them until daylight vainly trying to rescue things of value.
Sunrise showed a wreckaged childhood home and very unfortunate odours. Our wonderfully solicitous neighbour had gathered together all the packages and paraphernalia and presented it to me over the fence "in case the owners came back for them" and searching the trampled rose garden kept our hippy friends stoned for weeks.
The really remarkable thing about this album I'm playing now is how simply brilliant it sounds. I'm using a spindleless Roksan Xerxes turntable with an Ortofon Cadenza Black Moving Coil cartridge through a Rega IOS Phono Stage.
There is a PS Audio BHK pre and power Amplifier into a pair of Monitor Audio Platinum PL500 loudspeakers, and yes, this system is a McClaren F1 by comparison to the Austin A35-like HMV autoloader gramophone with 78rpm option that gouged the record that night in 1972. But the presence, the actual absence of surface noise, and the feeling of a glam Bowie singing in my room and echoing across the ages is is simply amazing. A journey in music, time, and space.
Playing Sufragette City though ... I am once again lying on the ground on a path in an field trying to control my breathing and bursting anxieties of bedrugged adolescence as the neighbours dog finds me. I'm not sure listening to it like this is helping me move on ... but it is amazing ...
+61 3 9639 2737
cavmail@carltonaudiovisual.com.au
164/172 Lygon St, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
