One of my favourite LPs, way back when I was at school, was The Doors’ Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine. This was a two LP best-of compilation of previously released tracks, plus one otherwise not-existing track. I recall taking this to school once … but not the vlnyl LP.
Oh no. No way would I take vinyl there. Vinyl was precious. To be played only on turntables with good quality cartridges tracking two or less grams.
No. What I took to school was an audio cassette recording I had made.
Now, normally I was careful to make sure that each track fitted properly onto the tape. But, for reasons I have no hope of recalling some three decades later, I did permit one track to only partially record, terminated prematurely by the end of the recordable section of the tape.
I write of this all these years later, prompted by listening to the offending track a few days ago some 35,000 feet above the central Australian desert on an MP3 player.
As it happens, the cassette of which I’ve been writing was stolen at school, which is to say, during or before 1975. Since then I imagine I’ve heard said track more than a hundred times (it’s ‘Take It As It Comes’ from the band’s self-titled first album). Yet still, as that point in the track approaches, I find myself mentally bracing for the anticipated flutter as the cassette player’s head runs over the end-join to the tape lead-out. Strange how these things stick.