Unique Serving Platter

If you show your teenage son or daughter a record album they are sure to think it’s something back from when time began. Most of today’s youngsters have never seen a vintage record player or a record. To them they’d resemble very large CDs and I bet when they heard the sound quality they’d cringe. But to anyone over 35, records are an important part of our history.

One of the most interesting things about the development and adaptation of recorded music is how far we’ve actually come. At one point you could purchase a reasonably large record for play on a vintage record player. If you were lucky the album would have twelve songs on it. Six on side A and six on side B. Now children have iPods and MP3 players that hold thousands of songs and they aren’t much bigger than a pack of gum.

Many adults still have their old records. They don’t keep them to listen to, but they are certainly a part of their nostalgia. A reminder of how life used to be when they were young. Many teenagers in the 50s, 60s and 70s had a vintage record player in their home they could listen to their albums on. They would gaze at the images on the album cover as Cher or The Beach Boys belted out a tune.

Today these items are still in demand, but to a much different group. Many young people are looking for a vintage record player so they can enjoy the same music their parents or grandparents did in exactly the same way. Any record album that could have been bought 30 or 40 years ago is now on CD, but if you want the vintage feel, you should play the original albums on a record player.

Others just want them as a showpiece. They’d never consider using one for it’s intended purpose. Instead they use them as decoration and conversation pieces. It’s easy to see why this would be a good idea as it’s really difficult not to make a comment when you see a blast from the past in the form of a vintage record player.

For those who’ve never seen one, take a quick online tour of an auction site. You can usually find several listed there on any given day. Although it may seem like an unusual and prehistoric item to you, for many of us it was the way we got to know our favorite recording artists and their music. Granted they weren’t as stylish or efficient as an iPod is, but they did their job and kept us dancing for years.

One of my favorite pastimes is to go round art galleries. I have been known to travel miles to see art shows featuring my favorite artists. Some shows don’t come around very often, such as the one I recently went to in London which brought together some of Michelangelo’s drawings from collections all over the world for the first time. It’s worth the traveling because you might not get the chance to see it again.

My favorite galleries are the ones that have impressive permanent collections, but which also are imaginative in their choice of visiting exhibitions. Recently, installations and video pieces have been dominating art shows. I’m not against these on principle and I think that there is room for everything, but I haven’t seen many examples to impress me. Everything comes in cycles anyway, and painting is making a comeback to art shows. I don’t really care what the genre is, as long as it’s interesting, but I have missed painting. I don’t think that anything should be almost outlawed because it’s fallen out of fashion.

I like to see retrospectives of artists, showing their work in chronological order. It’s interesting to see their unfolding development. I also like art shows, which explore a certain movement. The recent trend for themed exhibitions which hang 18th Century paintings next to 21st Century pictures leave me cold. For me, it’s a lazy concept and just an excuse to hang a lot of pictures up for the sake of it. I don’t want to immerse myself in a Monet, and then be greeted with a Dali the next minute. It’s jarring and confusing. Give me white walls, a well thought out hanging policy and a catalogue written in accessible, concise terms.

Recent exhibitions have gone out of their way to shock the public. Art shows containing pickled sheep and elephant dung have hit the headlines. These exhibits don’t actually shock me. My shock level is set fairly low. I do find most of this shock art boring. I think there are better emotions to evoke in the viewer, unless they are being shocked in a purposeful way. If a piece of art were to shock people out of their apathy concerning war and famine, I would be all for it. As it is, the aim of shock art seems to be to shock people for the sake of it. It’s all relative anyway. In their day, the Impressionists were shocking too.