HMV
Everyone knows the logo of HMV, the classic image of a dog looking into the horn of a phonograph. painted in 1898 by English artist Francis James Barraud and featuring his dog nipper, oddly the same name as one of my childhood pet dogs. the painting, titled His Master’s Voice has a timeless appeal, and has certainly stood the test of time but considering that the phonograph was state of the art technology at the time and would soon be superseded by newer models with new features and would soon loose the iconic trumpet.
I’m saying this because James was at an antique fair and saw, whilst not an Edison phonograph, certainly one that looks the part, so often the trumpets are dented or the mechanism doesn’t work, but this one was blaring out and he was hooked. He bought the gramophone and sent me a photo of it with “ look what i bought.” I thought he was crazy, its not our style and would take up a lot of room in our small shop. but as soon as he unloaded it from the car i too fell in love with it.
An entirely mechanical device that doesn’t use electricity, that most ubiquitous of power sources these days, but still plays music relatively loudly. A definite dinosaur of music players. The sound of the music it makes as well, is something quite special, i can see now why some people adore vinyl records. I had never really experienced vinyl before, i was bought up in the era of the CD, though do remember the cassette tapes, but vinyl was something to be avoided, it was for weird musos who always banged on about how its just not the same not on vinyl.
In an era where music is everywhere, its often overlooked just how new this state of affairs is and how much effort went into entertaining oneself in days gone by, up until just over a century ago all music was live music, wither in the choir at church, down the pub or the now unwanted pianos that were in every well respected home. When change came it came slowly at first, even with this thing, it takes a not inconsiderable amount of cranking to get enough stored energy to play a single track, which all leaves me with one question. Given the amount of effort our forebears put into music, did they appreciate it more and have we started taking it for granted?
