CSotD: To Boldly Go Where No Kid Has Gone Before

Mike Peterson Published: July 8, 2010 1 minute 4 comments

Cul de sac

There are several strips doing "odd summer camp" arcs this week, but Cul de Sac is featuring something that not only could exist but does, if not quite in this format. And, as always, Richard Thompson elevates things with a bit of social satire beyond the obvious, and a reaction shot to remind us that, incisive satire aside, giggling should be part of the reaction to a comic strip.

We ought, however, not to snicker too much at the idea of kids not knowing there are comics in the paper. For one thing, the newspapers have done a wonderful job of hiding them from young readers, by shrinking them down and reducing their numbers, and, of course, by preserving the strips that appeal to their great-grandparents at the expense of adding a mix that might appeal to them.

For another, whistling past the graveyard is a dubious strategy. I'm old enough to remember when we said that CDs had their advantages, but there would always be a place for the warmth and depth of sound on vinyl.

Yesterday, I was at that place — the recycling station — and a woman was going through a collection of LPs someone had left in the "free books" section that included some classic Herb Alpert, Billy Joel, BS&T, CSN&Y kinds of albums. She told me she'd bought a turntable that she can use to rip the music and laughed that she gets bogged down by trying to explain to her kids what each cut on a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album reminds her of.

I told her that, when I was doing Quiz Bowl three years ago, one of the questions in the "Technology" category was "With what device are the numbers 78, 45 and 33 1/3 associated?" There were six games going, so the question was posed to 12 teams of four high school kids. One team was able to answer the question.

(I also told her that my children are not yet old enough to be told what each cut of a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album reminds me of. And my grandchildren certainly aren't.)

Comments ⁴

JoshM.

And it is true that there is still a place for the warmth and depth of sound we get from vinyl. It’s confined to a niche market now, but still a strong one. (If someone had known where to go, they probably could have sold those LPs).
Even though the mass market will always favor the bland and tepid, I believe there will always remain some market for quality.

Nick Theodorakis

Used vinyl still seems to be selling well at the local Half Priced Bookstore. I’ll second Josh’s comment that those could have been sold.
Nick

Mark Jackson

How about “Section 43” or “Time Has Come Today”?

Mike

My problem with CDs has less to do with high fidelity than with historic fidelity. It may be that a CD on an expensive digital system doesn’t sound as good as an LP on an expensive analog system, but I’ll never know. My current system really belongs back in the previous discussion of Cracker Jack prizes.
That said, the memories I have of all those great albums are of the specific cuts as they were presented then. (And, no, Mark, I don’t discuss my associations with Time Has Come Today, the album cut or the album itself, but they are many and colorful.)
It’s heartbreaking, for instance, to see what Frank Zappa did to his catalog when they went digital. Maybe he should have done two-disk sets — the way he wishes it had sounded, and the way it did sound. And Eric Burdon seems to have purged the original Animals entirely in favor of his own covers of their songs.
My memories are of how the songs sounded, not how they might have sounded or should have sounded. And, to quote an album I think involved some tragic shark-jumping, “preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.”

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