While Xmas shopping (and I really did buy records for other people) I came across this gem:

The record, opened but still in its shrink-wrap, was released in 1971; though per Discogs, it is a rerelease of a recording that goes back to around 1960.

How any of us have gotten along without this record is a mystery. Why go all the way down to the basement to listen to the dulcet tones of your clothes dryer, when you can hear it in full “20 to 20,000 CPS Audiophile” quality on your living room stereo console (of course you have a solid mahogany, or at least imitation wood-grain, console, over by the pedestal ash tray).

The back cover, below is . . . a bit hazy. That is actually how it looks, like an out of focus photograph. But I suppose the demand to get this disc out into the hot hands of today’s discerning audiophiles was too great to retake the picture.

And it didn’t even cost the $2.50 that the sticker suggests had once been demanded. I am guessing that this record was never bought before, as Radio Shack (true geeks will recognize the Realistic logo as coming from that haven of cheap electronics) probably gave them away with appropriate purchases.

The extensive copy on the back cover is not credited, which is a shame, as the anonymous copywriter put his/her shoulder into the effort, perhaps trying to fill out the entire space. The essay has the peculiar tone of a high school composition:

“Every sound has its own story to tell.”

“Captured in its purest form, sound does indeed become an exciting and meaningful auditory experience. “

“Then, too, sound brings all kinds of associations.”

I particularly like “Then, too”, a lazy attempt to connect the ensuing catalog of associations to the limp evocation of sound “in its purest form” in the preceding paragraph. Who amongst us has not made use of this classic connective tissue in our (long-ago) school days?

The catalog of sound associations has its own rewards for the diligent peruser:

“Water running in a bathtub could recreate those dreaded Sunday nights when the very thought of a bath was like facing torture.”

This was written in 1960? Perhaps a traumatizing childhood memory for the writer, dating back to the pre-war era (the big one, WWII, as Herbert T. Gillis would say)?

“Hearing an audience’s applause at a theater might remind you, by inversion, of the time you played a role in a school production and forgot your lines, plunging the audience into deadly silence.”

Well, if I wasn’t sold on the LP before, I’m plunking my nickel down now. This “inversion” of applause into a well-nurtured memory of humiliation has an almost Nabokovian flavor, like something Charles Kinbote would have written in Pale Fire.

As the satisfyingly lengthy liner notes come to a close, we (ensconced in our comfortable living room wing-chair, in the requisite smoking jacket and ascot, a restorative glass of sherry in hand, the final tones of “Chain-Drive, Overhead Door” floating out from our hi-fi, recalling afternoons in Paris discussing musique concrete with Varese and the gang), are advised of a scintillating opportunity:

“It would . . . make a good parlor game to see if these sounds, removed and isolated from the contexts in which they originated, could be quickly and accurately identified.”

Wow, get Milton Bradley, Hasbro and Parker Brothers on the phone, this is our big chance!

Of course, we’ll have to include a pamphlet explaining what a “parlor game” (or even a parlor) is.

Wondering about the provenance of this find, I looked it up on Discogs and actually found a review, by an audiophile fellow, who took great pains to discuss the quality of the pressing, the depth of the vinyl used in the pressing, the frequency response range…and ultimately a somewhat sad assessment that this pressing was not up to the original release, relative to the startling realism embodied in the original release.

Here is his review: https://www.discogs.com/No-Artist-Live-Mechanical-Sound-Effects-In-Stereo/release/2264509

There’s an old saying that you can’t vaudeville vaudeville, and some variation of that surely applies here . . .