With multiple industry reports showing that vinyl is experiencing a major (albeit concentrated) sales boost, almost singlehandedly resuscitating UK’s record stores, it’s hard to ignore that the little wax format that could is experiencing a major resurgence.
But if vinyl’s burgeoning popularity is too mainstream for you, or the recent international Cassette Store Day didn’t quite seem redundant enough for your cynical tastes, then here’s just the format to keep you on the (vintage) cutting edge: the phonograph cylinder.
Before the inventor acetate pressings – the early ancestor of vinyl – came along and did to them what the digital era did for CDs (re: pushed them into near-dodo like status), the phonograph cylinder was the way to listen to music.
Though cylinders haven’t been produced – let alone sold – in nearly a century, the current era’s fascination with all things retro has reached a new extreme with Justin Martell, a diehard fan of ukelele player and music archivist Tiny Tim, as The Vinyl Factory reports.
In a tribute to his musical hero, Martell is releasing previously unreleased material from the ukelele strummer, a tune called ‘Nobody Else Can Love Me (Like My Old Tomato Can), on a limited run of 50 phonograph cylinders.
“There’s an appeal to releasing something on a medium that hasn’t seen a wide release in close to 100 years by a major recording star,” says Martell in a Time magazine interview about the über-retro release method.
With the help of Benjamin Canday, a leading experimenter and enthusiast on the Thomas Edison-invented phonograph (known by the YouTube handle The Victrola Guy), Martell notes that his wilfully obscure release will only be playable on a historical gramophone, not something easy to come by, let alone maintain and use.
Cylinders were eventually outmoded for new technology because of their difficulty in duplication and because they were generally not very durable, degrading much faster with each play than was practical. That, and they couldn’t hold much music. All in all, a very clear loser in the survival of the fittest.
The Tiny Tim fan boy’s reasoning for the very niche and impractical release? “In today’s market it’s special edition and collectors’ items that really sell. This is what people are interested in, I think. It’s the extreme version of vinyl.”
Offering some clemency to fans, the ‘Nobody Else Can Love Me (Like My Old Tomato Can) cylinders will come with a download code that features three different versions of the recording – each played through a different gramophone device of the old era – for those that can’t quite be bothered setting up their outdated equipment… or you know, don’t have it.
If Martell’s Tiny Tim rarity sounds like something you’ve just got to have for your library of obscurities, the cylinder is available for order from his website. Otherwise have a listen the way the digital era seems to do everything these days – for free – in the video below.
