Spinning Those Discs

When the Grand Funk Railroad song We're an American Band came on the radio I flashed back to the days of vinyl 33's and 45's.

In my mind I saw the one of those adapters that snapped into the center of a 45 - a piece of plastic shaped like a couple of plastic S's that allowed the 45 to be centered on the same narrow spindle that kept LP's centered on the turntable.

That memory took me to the select few 45's that had been produced in translucent neon vinyl. There were few things as far out as a lime green record spinning on a stereo.

While I certainly like the convenience of CD's Ipods's and digital downloads I wonder what it would have been like if we had never had vinyl.  We might never have discovered the hidden messages to be heard when a record was played backward or at a lower speed. We would never have stressed over Paul being dead or wondered at the darker side of Black Sabbath.

Then again I guess we might wonder at what is hidden is today's data bytes.