Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Herb Alpert On Acid
Let me stress this: I am in no way affiliated with Herb Alpert or with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. In this context, please do not equate Herb Alpert, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass or Herb Alpert and TJB with anyone or entities other than Herb Alpert, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass and/or Herb Alpert and TJB. Remember, too, that I have no connection with A&M Records, Alpert and Moss and/or Almo Music. Please, please do not forget that the music of Herb Alpert and his TJB is embedded in my brain. I am definitely affiliated with this brain of mine.
Let's get down to business: Picture a skinny child of eight. This is a profile shot. In the lower right of the frame is a tiny record player of the type parents give to their children when they begin to fear their child will start using their record player. "Now you have your own record player, Jimmy." (Or, as the case may be, "Now you have your own record player, Sue.") The parent and/or parents would also add "You like the Tijuana Brass, don't you? I/We got you a Tijuana Brass record." Entering the frame, the eight-year-old kneels in front of his new record player, rips the cellophane off of the record cover and takes a full thirty seconds in an effort to get the hole in the record over the spindle on the turntable. The spindle is the rejecting kind, and, even though the record is finally on the spindle, the child can't get it to slide more than a third of the way down, because it is blocked by the jutting portion of the spindle, which is designed to recede when a new record is supposed to drop down after the previous one in the stack has been played. "God damn it, do this," says the parent and forces the record onto the turntable.
Come back in six months and take the record out of the jacket (and try to find the inner sleeve, which is likely to be trapped beneath the leg of the bed and partly concealed by a throw-rug) and inspect the hole at the center of the record. The label around the hole will have craggly, somewhat circular lines made by the spindle during various attempts by the child to get the record over it. You can tell which is his favorite side of the record by the comparative number of swirls on the opposite side of the label. (Side two's label is more marked than the one on side one, so side one is the favorite.)
Look at the picture again. The child is putting the needle on. He's better at this now than ninety-nine percent of adults, not because he's careful with records, but because this record has an important beginning and he always has to hear this part. Okay, this picture isn't silent anymore:
A crashing, resonating percussive boom as a crowd cheers "Ole," and immediately, the braying of high brass. "Ba-daaah! Ba-da-ba-da-buh-bah-da-ba-daah! Ba-dah! Ba-dah! Ba-daaah!" The boy props the album cover against the dresser and watches the still picture on this cover. See the confident look of the man raising his glass to toast those listening to his record. Note the relaxed quality of the confident man. He is sitting. The chair he's sitting in could be used by a matador if he wanted to taunt a bull. The crowd cheers as a bass guitar which sounds as if spurs are attached to it proceeds, in pensive purposefulness, toward the center of the ring.
[I wrote this a few months ago and never got up to the part about psychedelic TJB]
Let's get down to business: Picture a skinny child of eight. This is a profile shot. In the lower right of the frame is a tiny record player of the type parents give to their children when they begin to fear their child will start using their record player. "Now you have your own record player, Jimmy." (Or, as the case may be, "Now you have your own record player, Sue.") The parent and/or parents would also add "You like the Tijuana Brass, don't you? I/We got you a Tijuana Brass record." Entering the frame, the eight-year-old kneels in front of his new record player, rips the cellophane off of the record cover and takes a full thirty seconds in an effort to get the hole in the record over the spindle on the turntable. The spindle is the rejecting kind, and, even though the record is finally on the spindle, the child can't get it to slide more than a third of the way down, because it is blocked by the jutting portion of the spindle, which is designed to recede when a new record is supposed to drop down after the previous one in the stack has been played. "God damn it, do this," says the parent and forces the record onto the turntable.
Come back in six months and take the record out of the jacket (and try to find the inner sleeve, which is likely to be trapped beneath the leg of the bed and partly concealed by a throw-rug) and inspect the hole at the center of the record. The label around the hole will have craggly, somewhat circular lines made by the spindle during various attempts by the child to get the record over it. You can tell which is his favorite side of the record by the comparative number of swirls on the opposite side of the label. (Side two's label is more marked than the one on side one, so side one is the favorite.)
Look at the picture again. The child is putting the needle on. He's better at this now than ninety-nine percent of adults, not because he's careful with records, but because this record has an important beginning and he always has to hear this part. Okay, this picture isn't silent anymore:
A crashing, resonating percussive boom as a crowd cheers "Ole," and immediately, the braying of high brass. "Ba-daaah! Ba-da-ba-da-buh-bah-da-ba-daah! Ba-dah! Ba-dah! Ba-daaah!" The boy props the album cover against the dresser and watches the still picture on this cover. See the confident look of the man raising his glass to toast those listening to his record. Note the relaxed quality of the confident man. He is sitting. The chair he's sitting in could be used by a matador if he wanted to taunt a bull. The crowd cheers as a bass guitar which sounds as if spurs are attached to it proceeds, in pensive purposefulness, toward the center of the ring.
[I wrote this a few months ago and never got up to the part about psychedelic TJB]
# posted by Fredwemyss @ 3:19 PM 
