The Good Old Days

I found an amazing website on the internet recently. You input your date of birth and the website works out how old you are. I had a go and it turns out that I'm Quite an Old Person. This is good because it means I can remember the Good Old Days, when things were so much better than they are now with all these modern, new-fangled, so-called inventions.

One thing that occurred to me is how much change I've seen in recorded music over the years. When I were a lad, we didn't really have any recorded music. All we had was a radio, and a valve one at that, no transistors. I think the BBC devoted about an hour a week to "Popular Music", leaving the rest of the time free for unpopular music. So radio Luxemburg was our station of choice.

Then my gran had to move out of her large house (that we'd lived in with her for a while) and so we got some of her stuff. This included an old wind-up gramophone. It stood about waist height on four legs and was about eighteen inches square. It didn't have a trumpet horn thing, but there was a speaker underneath the turntable. It was obviously mass produced and I suppose in the 30s/40s it would have been the cheapest way to have your own music.

I remember it being great fun when the voices slowed down and you had to wind it up in mid-song.

The records were all 78 rpm and very thick and heavy The only two records I remember from our collection were Der Fuhrer's Face and The Lambeth Walk.

Funnily enough, I heard Der Fuhrer's Face on the radio the other week on a programme about records banned by the BBC. It was a song poking fun at Hitler, released in 1942 and the Beeb didn't like it for some reason. As I recall, relations between Britain and Germany were rather fraught at that time, what with World War Two and the Blitz and everything, so perhaps they didn't want to inflame things any further. More probably though, it was because they thought it was lower class and oikish.

As for the Lambeth Walk, I can still remember some of the words. I could give a rendition if you like. Oh, go on then, twist my arm -

Any little Lamberf gal,

Wiv er little Lamberf pal,

You'll find them all,

Doing the Lamberf Wawk


Any evening, any day,

Any time down Lamberf way,

You'll find them all,

Doing the Lamberf Wawk


Everything is free and easy,

Do as yer darn well pleasy,

Why don't yer make yer way there,

Go there, stay there.

In fact the last verse is quite prescient because police in the Borough of Lambeth are pioneering a "softly softly" approach to cannabis. Which I think means people can smoke dope in the street and not get arrested. Free and easy indeed.

Anyway, I digress. The point I was making is how much music technology has changed over the years.
The wind-up was old-fashioned even then, and as I got older the electric record player and 33 and 45 records became more accessible.

Then do you remember cassettes coming out? That was late 60s/early 70s, as I recall. You could get players with straps so you could hang them over your shoulder. The first Walkmans, but a lot heavier.

I think things stayed pretty much the same through the 70s and probably the 80s too. Videos came out, but they don't count as they're not really music. I suppose CDs were invented in the 80s but became more popular in the 90s.

And now it's all digital. I've got a little mp3 player. I've tried listening to it, but it doesn't do much for me (although people say it works better with a battery in). I can listen to podcasts should the fancy ever take me and I can't see how music technology can advance much more, unless they invent tiny little bands that play in your head.

But still, it's quite a big change in one lifetime, isn't it?

I hope you're all impressed.