Gillian G. Gaar > Quotes

“Yet for all the changes the 12-inch LP has been through, the process for making them remains the same. An aluminum acetate lacquer disc is made from the source recordings, whether tapes or digital files. A metal master disc is used to make a “mother,” and vinyl is flattened between two stampers, each “stamped” with the basic info needed to press a vinyl LP. The number of copies pressed varies according to the order and demand, although, of course, these days it’s rare for huge quantities of a single release to be pressed, let alone the millions that were done in the heydays of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, and Michael Jackson.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Early 12-inch discs, however, didn’t come close to approximating what they’d offer by the middle of the twentieth century. Although they could accommodate more sound, they still had a playing time of just three and a half minutes—a big improvement over the cylinder’s mere two minutes but hardly enough to squeeze in full-length operas.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“The first stereo discs were issued by Audio Fidelity in March 1958, one geared toward showing off a range of sound effects (Railroad: The Sounds of a Vanishing Era), another featuring an established jazz star, Lionel Hampton.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“There is no doubt that, with the occasional exception, you will invariably get better sound on the first or initial pressings of a record, particularly in relation to 1960s and 1970s releases, when the art of cutting vinyl was at its peak,” says Alec Palao, who has compiled, annotated, and produced hundreds of reissues for labels like Ace and Rhino. “And a general rule of thumb is that pressings from the country where the artist is from, or where they tended to record, will sound the best. Even countries whose pressings are feted, such as Japan, still had to rely on supplied copy masters as a cutting source when issuing overseas material.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Arty Italian ensemble Degenerazione Musicale drilled holes in the grooves between the tracks of a late-1980s EP, and listeners had to lift the needle between every song to make sure the needle didn’t get stuck and possibly damaged.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“As Charlie Gillett wrote in his seminal history The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, “Played through the huge speakers of jukeboxes, 78s delivered a massive sound which can only be vaguely approximated by CDs on a domestic hi-fi or portable system. Owners of Elvis’s 78rpm singles on Sun justifiably believe that no other format has come close to reproducing their impact.” Jim Dawson, coauthor of What Was the First Rock ’n’ Roll Record? and 45 RPM, agrees, telling National Public Radio’s The Record that 78s “could accommodate wider grooves (great for bass). It was actually one of the best music carriers; far superior to 45s in that regard. Once you hear 1950s R&B and rock ’n’ roll on a 78 jukebox, everything else will sound anemic.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“By mid-1968, albums accounted for more than 75 percent of record sales.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“The next obvious—if, again, at least in hindsight—step was to dress up the packaging with specially designed cover artwork, starting with a 1940 album of four 78s titled Smash Song Hits by Rodgers & Hart. This was designed by Alex Steinweiss, whose 1942 cover for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5 in E-flat had a rainbow-like line of colors like the one seen on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, though it’s doubtful the designers of the 1973 megasmash had seen it.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“The vinyl experience enables full music engagement and requires full emotional, mental, and intellectual attention. Unlike streaming files, which can become unobtrusive background music, vinyl records insist on full attention and give commensurate rewards in listening pleasure.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Vinyl—short for polyvinyl chloride or PVC—was first produced in the early 1930s and almost immediately was used in radio program transcriptions.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Record albums date back as far as 1910, if they’re thought of in the same way as photo albums, binding together empty sleeves into which discs could be slotted”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“The LP was also far more suited for presenting long comedy routines that would have been impossible to fit on singles, whether from daring cutting-edgers like Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory, comics like Moms Mabley targeting a black audience, or bestsellers like Bob Newhart.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Ten-inch discs also appeared early in the recording industry’s history and were the more popular format until the 1950s, its size chosen perhaps simply because it was a round number.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Jukebox operators much preferred 7-inch discs to LPs, ensuring quick turnover as patrons fed coins into the machines. They also preferred 7-inch discs to shellac 10-inch discs, since jukeboxes could hold more discs of that size.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Mono editions of Beatles albums, for instance, were available as late as 1968’s self-titled LP (a.k.a. the “White Album”). Such was the low esteem in which stereo was sometimes held that gauche “electronically reprocessed for stereo” LPs were concocted for the American market.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“it happens, the first R&B 45, released by RCA in March 1949, was a historically important one: Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right, Mama” (first issued on 78 in 1947), which Elvis Presley would cover in mid-1954 on his first single.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“Edison developed a 12-inch 80rpm (revolutions per minute) disc that could fit up to twenty minutes a side in the mid-1920s, but this also failed due to poor sound and the high cost of the equipment needed to play it.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution

“So, many rock and soul releases continued to be issued in mono; and if they were available in both stereo and mono editions, often considerably less attention was paid to the stereo iteration. This was more pronounced in the United Kingdom, even after the British Invasion had made British rock a huge force in the record business. With a markedly lower average income, young British rock fans were far less likely to have stereo equipment than their American counterparts.”
― Gillian G. Gaar, In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution