Records

Apply this bullticky to records, to the recorded-music EXPERIENCE, pre CD, and the material component--grooved, sculpted vinyl--more than holds its own. So supremely vulnerable is this whatzostuff, so susceptible to further onslaughts of form--resculptings, regroovings, smirchings and encrustings--that a whole hot WAD of variations on theme is table-set and served from the getgo:
Stations of sonic show & tell, shown/told...all the skips, sticks, jumps, hisses, cracklepops which document devotion, confirm get-off or loathe, it's abuse either way...flat black plastic: as "interactive" as silly putty (or a slice of pizza)...wear-and-tear as index of both age and youth--the record's age and the object-management blunders of YOUR youth...ditches-cum-glitches fractionalizing, obliterating, rendering inaccessible even quasi-original sound, grave-marking its exit from this auditory life...(hey, I once got a used Sun Ra elpee, took it home and found a hole in it--not the spindle hole--a CRATER at the start of one track clear through to the other side...books, by comparison, don't suffer such wear/tear in finite time, or rather, their wear/tear doesn't normally preclude continued full-bore interaction, doesn't annihilate lines, pages, whole chapters (or render them especially unreadable)...even in their DISPOSABILITY, a residuum of sonic potential: records as frisbees--the adventitious sounds of flight and smackup...
all pentultimate to the final outpost of vinyl irony: the unit record, irrespective of its health or welfare, DECOMMISSIONED...freed of sonic obligation...serving no ongoing material function but to give body to a cover and sleeve...silenter than a Cage silence piece...
SOUNDLESS MERE MATTER.

-R. Meltzer, Vinyl Reckoning
From A Whore Just Like The Rest

Related: The Low End Theory currently has a post dedicated to hip hop songs about recdord-digging.

Not related: Grill season has officially begun! Last night, I fired the sucker up for the first time this year and barbecued some chicken, and threw a few esparagus on there for good measure.

I have only the last two chapters (100 pages) to go in Ulysses!

EDITED