edison, unplugged

[alocispepraluger102]

By LAWRENCE DOWNES

Published: June 11, 2006

In a basement recording studio in the Bronx the other day, unencumbered by

wires, cables, amplifiers or headsets, a huddle of musicians took their cue and

eased into a song. It was a four-man band — trumpet, clarinet, banjo and

battered tuba — and a singer, a young woman with saucer eyes, a blond bob and

excellent diction.

They played and she sang into the fat ends of two long metal horns, like

backward megaphones, that funneled the sound to a wooden box, a wind-up lathe on

which spun a shiny cylinder coated in brittle black wax. As a needle etched a

groove in the cylinder, a surgically attentive man dusted away the shavings with

a paintbrush and little puffs of breath.

When the music stopped, he put the cylinder on another machine for playback. He

turned the crank, placed the needle and a sweet, melancholy song flooded the

room. It sounded like an unearthed relic of the Roaring Twenties, though the

recording was barely a minute old.

Down in the poolroom

Some of the gang

were talking of gals they knew

Women are all the same, said Joe

Then one dizzy bird said, Pal, ain't you heard

the story of True Blue Lou.

It was an electric moment, though electricity had nothing to do with it. The

recording was the product of the collaboration of a radio host, Rich Conaty, who

plays 20's and 30's jazz and pop on Sundays on WFUV; Peter Dilg, an acoustic

engineer; and the pickup musicians who leapt at the invitation to make a

brand-new, old-time Edison cylinder.

Mr. Conaty, Mr. Dilg and the band are first-rank, certifiable enthusiasts. At

lunch after the session, they plunged obsessively into Thomas Edison lore and

Tin Pan Alley trivia. They lamented the supremacy of inferior recording

technologies. They pined for Betamax and cassettes, for Bix Beiderbecke and Cab

Calloway.

Mr. Conaty, who plans to play the cylinder on his show tonight, has an audience

that, practically by definition, is too young to remember Sophie Tucker, Ukulele

Ike or the young and jazzy Bing Crosby. But the people who, like me, plan their

Sunday nights around the show have discovered pleasures in the music totally

unrelated to nostalgia. It's a revelation to hear music so fresh and strange, so

witty and soulful, from people who are dead and gone.

And there is another pleasure, too. It's the warmth of the technology. There are

surely downloadable versions of "True Blue Lou." But unlike the MP3, whose magic

is incomprehensible and thus boring, the wax cylinder is viscerally miraculous.

It's staggering to think that lungs and plucked strings could vibrate the air,

wiggle a stylus and capture a song for 100 years on a fragile thing that looks

like a toilet paper roll. Compared with the iPod, it's a lot more human, a lot

more accessible, a lot easier to love.

Once you've seen and heard it done, there's no going back.

[Alexander]

Compared with the iPod, it's a lot more human, a lot

more accessible, a lot easier to love.

Once you've seen and heard it done, there's no going back.

Great! Of course, in order to carry around as much music as on my iPod, I'd have to carry around around 3146 cylinders, not to mention the device on which to play them...

Far better than an iPod, I'm sure!

[alocispepraluger102]

Compared with the iPod, it's a lot more human, a lot

more accessible, a lot easier to love.

Once you've seen and heard it done, there's no going back.

Great! Of course, in order to carry around as much music as on my iPod, I'd have to carry around around 3146 cylinders, not to mention the device on which to play them...

Far better than an iPod, I'm sure!

should be no problem for your average 18" wheel SUV......