You're so warm, oh, the ritual, when I lay down your crooked arm

If there’s “LP” on its label
Spin the disc on a turntable
Drop the stylus on the grooves
RPM - how quick it moves.

I was surprised at just how much vinyl there was laying around when I was an undergraduate. Yeah, there wasn’t as much of it as there were compact discs, but still there was more than I had ever seen and it was one of the few mediums I recognized. Like most kids my age I had a record collection growing up but, unlike most of the kids, mine had zilch in the way of popular music and consisted more of stories read by Danny Kaye or soundtracks to kid-themed television shows or – my very first – a bizarre exercise in customization with a ridiculous song that repeated my name, or its closest equivalent, over and over. I can still hear echoes of “Martin, it’s ja birth-a-day” to this day.

But everything before college was “records” and now I got to identify those blacks discs as that: discs. Also frowned upon was calling the playback device a “record player,” as it was in truth a turntable and made of more stringent stuff that your home version. But the concept was the same: the discs are placed up on the plate, the tonearm is moved into position, the stylus is cued to the proper track of the disc, and – voilà – you have sound. Contrary to what we were told by the Criminal Element Orchestra, the cartridge did not contain a needle to drop upon the record; rather, the stylus was made of diamond and the vibration of the stylus was converted into an electrical signal through the process of transduction – which I see from my notes was a vocabulary word on one of Propel’s quizzes.

There were a few things students had to be careful with when it came to using the turntable. First was the speed. Young music fans will find nothing notable about the numbers 78, 45, and 33, but these numbers corresponded to the revolutions per minute (rpm) of the phonograph record. Most of the albums we had in the studio were LPs that required playback at 33 1/3 rpm; they could be made to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks if played at 45 rpm. This was something we had to learn to pay attention to as early as our practicum labs with Dr. Propel, who enjoyed nothing more than fiddling with switches and knobs for our hands-on quizzes. The instructions would be to play the turntable “on air” in one of the production rooms. While the student might flip all the switches on the console correctly, if she or he forgot to check the turntable speed then you knew that Propel would be sitting with his half-tooth grin and chuckling for being able to pull one past you.

Secondly, students had to know how to properly cue a record. Keep in mind that the turntable sat stationary until the motor was activated; only then did the plate that held the disc begin to move. If the turntable could not get up to its proper speed before the sound began then there was often an odd noise known as a wow. I suppose, if I needed to write out the description, one could say it sounded like someone talking in slow-motion that rapidly sped up to normal. To prevent this wowing noise, the user had to set the stylus on the lead groove preceding the desired track and then spin the plate (and record) until the exact spot where the sound begins is pinpointed. From here the user spun the plate counterclockwise about a quarter turn or so and then waited.... When it was time to play the track, the DJ made sure the audio console was ready and activated the turntable. Once powered-up, the turntable spun the plate with the disc, the stylus transferred the vibrations on the disc into an electrical signal, something else I’ve probably forgotten to mention happens, and finally the amplified sound is broadcast over the air.

And, if you’re lucky, the disc isn’t scratched. I suppose that could be the third problem with records – when previous users didn’t handle them the best they could sometime receive irreversible damage to their surfaces.

Our main studio had two turntables, neither of which was in regular use by the time I showed up. Most records had been phased out of the control room by my junior year and those that weren’t permanently borrowed by students usually got shuffled from one production room to another in someone’s attempt to get them out of sight. A few of the “good” ones that showed up in the Music Library at one point were The Blue Album of Beatles hits; a 12” single of a Whitesnake song; some David Lee Roth, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop solo albums; and volume 4 of a 10-piece sound effects set. When the studio was remodeled a few years later one turntable was removed.

Once in a while something new showed up – a Beck single here, a Sean Lennon single there, and more than enough R&B remixes – that required a turntable and the DJ on duty had to recall his or her turntable etiquette. Most people shunned away from using the turntable but there were a handful of people that enjoyed dusting it off now and then. For example, when I had to fill in on a Friday night (9 pm to midnight) shift for a month or so my senior year I usually concluded my three hours with the “final vinyl.” I always assumed that no one cared the song was on vinyl but I thought it was cool. In fact, the only person who probably thought it was really cool was Joseph “Joey” Jones, the commercial radio geek-fan who took surveys of radio stations to get find out how many still “cued the disc.”

“Cued the disc.” Man, I always thought it odd when he said that.

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Spin the Black Circle
(Pearl Jam)
Pearl Jam
From the album Vitalogy
1994

See this needle...a see my hand...
Drop, drop, dropping it down...oh, so gently...
Well here it comes...I touch the plane...
Turn me up...won't turn you away...

Spin, spin...spin the black circle
Spin, spin...spin the black, spin the black...
Spin, spin...spin the black circle
Spin, spin...whoa...

Pull it out...a paper sleeve...
Oh, my joy...only you deserve conceit...
I'm so big...a-my whole world...
I'd rather you...rather you...than her...

Spin, spin...spin the black circle
Spin, spin...spin the black, spin the black...
Spin, spin...spin the black circle
Spin, spin...whoa...oh...

You're so warm...oh, the ritual...when I lay down your crooked arm...

Spin, spin...spin the black circle
Spin, spin...spin the black, spin the black...
Spin, spin...spin the black circle
Spin, spin...
Spin the black (5x) circle
Spin the black circle... (4x)
Spin, spin... (6x)