So I’ve had a trend over the last year or two or hand wave something like that of getting into cosy fantasy. It started with Travis Baldree’s book Legends & Lattes and has meandered around (amongst other things not exactly cosy nor fantasy like my beloved Murderbot series). Recently I uncovered a couple of books by T. J. Klune that I had snagged at some point and then forgotten about (this happens more than I care to admit), starting with The House in the Cerulean Sea. It’s a sweet little story with a good message but for me personally wasn’t compelling enough to write a whole blog post about. However, it does feature a protagonist who bonds with a boy (who may or may not be the Antichrist, depending on your point of view) over old vinyl records like Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens and it gave me a yen for having a record player again.
The last time I owned a turntable was probably almost 30 years ago. I can no longer clearly recall the circumstances, but somewhere in my second or third year of university I had come across one of those all-in-one stereo systems that were a dime a dozen in the mid-nineties — you probably know the type if you are from the US and over 40. It had a radio tuner, two cassette decks, a CD player, and, of course, on the top, a turntable. It probably wasn’t that cheap, and why it got left out on the sidewalk I’ll never really know. There was some minor operational issue with it (maybe with one of the cassette players?) and I either managed to fiddle it into working again or just worked around it. I had some speakers I had inherited from the family after my dad upgraded the sound system at home that I hooked up to the thing and it made a reasonable source of tunes that I could also use to make my own mix tapes with and I loved it.
I wish I still had that thing.
Space being a premium for me since I had no permanent residence in my university days, I didn’t have a huge record collection. It was whatever I could come across in thrift stores that struck my fancy. I can’t even remember much of what I had beyond a copy of Harry Belafonte’s Calypso that I cherished (being, of course, a huge fan of the original Beetlejuice movie).
I would put it on and dance around with my housemates to “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” and sing along really loudly: “That’s RIGHT! De woman is… SMAR-TER!”
I don’t know what it was about the book that brought this wave of nostalgia back for my old stereo system and my paltry little record collection. I don’t really have room anymore for a turntable or records (even the CDs have been relegated to a box in the attic and the only device we have that can even play them is a decrepit PlayStation 3 that we can’t use because the batteries in the controllers have all died). It just gave me a wish for a quiet little room where I could put a little cabinet down with a turntable on it, some speakers, and dance around to Harry Belafonte.