- Bring on the Lucie by Hallelujah the Hills - October 9, 2015
- Experiment: Two Words - July 27, 2013
- POV - July 19, 2013
But on 45?
ED PARK • Here’s a simple/brilliant/catchy thing by Geoff Geis: FAST RAM. Which is exactly what it sounds like: Ram played at 45 rpm.
Geis writes:
I’ve listened to Ram on 45 a whole lot, but I’ve barely listened to it on 33. And while my initial love affair with it was a few years ago, I’ve gotten back into it pretty hard lately. Coincidentally, the other day it was the topic of conversation at a party; fortunately it was a party with a turntable and a copy of Ram. My friend Kyle S said that he had a natural aversion to things that sounded “chipmunky” because of some bad experiences with Christmas records when he was a kid. My buddy Dan C proposed that people in the era of Ram were so drugged-out that slow music appealed to them more, and he used Paul’s own “Helter Skelter” as an example. Both of them really dug Ram when it was played fast. Kyle even said that he wasn’t that interested in listening to the record at 33. I nodded my head to that. Ram on 33 sucks compared to Ram on 45!
What do you think?
(Via Rob Sheffield on FB, author of the new book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran)
(Bonus: Here’s what Devin had to say about Ram On, the recent cover album by L.A. bands.)
“Dan C proposed that people in the era of Ram were so drugged-out that slow music appealed to them more…”
*wince*
sometimes I’m not so sure about my generation.
Great fun! I think Paul would get a smile out of it, too. I greatly prefer it at 33 1/3, however, not just because of the chipmunky singing (thought that gets MIGHTY irritating after a while), but because so much of the musical texture gets lost.
I accidentally did something similar to speeding up “Ram” when I put the 12-inch single of “Deliverance” on at 33. If you play it at 45, it’s a good dance reworking of Paul’s “Hope of Deliverance,” but at 33 rpm it’s a quite spooky-sounding house/trance record that works just as well.
Here’s to vinyl serendipity!
生存乃是不斷地在內心與靈魂交戰；寫作是坐著審判自己。..................................................
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融會貫通的智慧，永遠不會被遺忘。..................................................
Hope this isn’t too far off topic, but all this talk of speeding up reminds me of the following:
In late 1958/early 1959, days before his last tour, Buddy Holly recorded acoustic guitar demos on a reel-to-reel ampex in his Greenwich Village apartment. Most of them were new songs he was writing (like “Crying Waiting Hoping”) but a few were covers, like “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”
He recorded “Slippin’ And Slidin'”, one fast version, and several versions that were real slow
For years, fans listened to these extremely slow versions (they were released on vinyl with horrible overdubs sometime in the ’60s), thinking “wow, heavy”…
Finally, Waylon Jennings (Holly’s bass player on the last tour) revealed that Holly had been amused by the Chipmunks, and was experimenting with his tape recorder, singing and playing the song very slow, then playing it back fast.
Some Holly fans went back to the slow recordings, played them back sped up, and sure enough, here was Buddy Holly’s parody of the Chipmunks, ala Little Richard.
Holly’s joke was finally revealed, some forty years later.