"Don Webb - The Shiny Surface" - читать интересную книгу автора (Webb Don)

garbage. Sentimental slime that you could only listen to in the throes of
adolescent lust.

I picked a couple. It doesnтАЩt matter which ones. I took them out in the
Dallas heat, became nauseated at the thought of what I was carrying, and
tossed them into a chocolate brown dumpster. Flies rose. Where was the
real past? The past that was so strong it could dissolve the present тАУ the
past that had made me. Had I sold it somewhere along the way?

I believed in my present. I was totally focused on my goals and I
realised that I was different from most people. I didnтАЩt have a theme song. I
didnтАЩt have a platter that invoked the past. Everything was in my present -
what if that were ever taken away?
 There is little music for that fine cutting edge called the present.
Music calls us to the past. To the friends, the parties, the quiet times alone
when we played it. For the new consumers, technology no longer made the
single tune easy and cheap to get to. How would they record their lives?
And I was in the same fix as them. IтАЩd sold my singles.

I was scared - actually scared - that maybe there was a song that
would bring the past so rapidly into the present as to destroy it. I was
scared of the past. ThereтАЩs a lot of past out there to destroy any present
moment.

Why had I sold my singles? I really hadnтАЩt made much money on
them - I doubt if I got a buck apiece. Maybe I had a fear of what the
personal past could do. Maybe I kept the past under control by buying and
selling it.

I went back to work. I had Janet go out and buy me three records
from an expensive retro-vogue shop. She found тАШI want to Hold Your HandтАЩ,
тАШThe Lion Sleeps TonightтАЩ and тАШRodeo RomeoтАЩ. They were safe platters
and I was happy.

****

The Zenith Cobra-Matic had a heavy casing of brown-grey steel. The
record-playing mechanism was suspended inside the heavy frame by thick
springs, so the record wouldnтАЩt skip no matter how wild the dancing. But the
feature that made the Cobra-Matic was the tone-arm - with its painted spine,
eyes and tongue, it was a thin snake. Definitely the cutting edge of cool.
Stereophonic High Fidelity. 16 33 45 78 r.p.m.

Hal was saying, тАШ. . . and when the blue-haired lady sold it to me, it had
a great 78, тАЬI Like My Chicken FryinтАЩ SizeтАЭ by Johnny Bond on the Columbia
label.тАЩ

HalтАЩs current squeeze, Liz, was putting the first single on - predictably
тАШRock Around the ClockтАЩ. Eric Towser, the CPA who did all of our taxes, lit
the first joint. The electric purple bell-bottoms didnтАЩt do much for his