This afternoon I indulged in my hobby of restoring old 78 RPM albums; I find it relaxing and rewarding and just kinda fun all around. On today's menu: a rare but not particularly valuable 4-disc set from 1935, of Eugene Ormandy and the Minneapolis Symphony putting down the premiere recording of John Alden Carpenter's Adventures in a Perambulator, a bland bit of orchestral fluff written in 1914. It's on RCA M-238. The "M" means that it's a manual-sequence set instead of being designed for use with automatic record changers; if that were the case, its catalog number would DM-238. It's clearly an original pressing of the set, witnessed by its classic scrolled "Victrola" label, very soon to be retired in favor of the "banded" style label that became the RCA standard until the advent of the LP.
The performance is excellent—Minneapolis has got to be the most persistently underrated orchestra in the Western hemisphere—and furthermore the album is a "Z" pressing. That's a pressing on a much higher-grade shellac than the norm, resulting in an unusually quiet record surface. So even though RCA M-238 looked pretty beat up on the outside and emitted a veritable cloud of moldy dust, the records themselves were in tip-top condition and just sang their little hearts out, after they had been given a thorough bath in the Spin-Clean. And even the album doesn't look so sad after a careful treatment with a no-harsh-chemical kitchen cleaner. Those can work wonders on stained album jackets, either from the 78 or LP era—but stay clear of the hard-core bathroom or kitchen surface cleaners, because those will probably take the shine right off along with the schmutz. The organic-type cleaners are your best bet.
Carpenter's silly Perambulator requires only 7 sides, and this is a 4-disc set, thus they had a side to fill. They took care of that with Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro. That makes for a fine, invigorating finale that inadvertently reveals Carpenter for the wishy-washy milksop that he was. The album's liner notes have also survived in fine shape save a bit of brownishness here and there. The uncredited writer was charged with coming up with a full-length article on the Carpenter piece. That could not have been an easy assignment. Adventures in a Perambulator is a singularly undistinguished composition.
So our writer cooked up filler that doesn't quite sound like filler unless you've written the same sort of shit yourself and know precisely how to spot it. Consider: "The first movement of the Suite is in the style of a short introduction in which the principal characters are brought forward." He was more concerned with keeping up his word count than actually saying anything. In fact, he doesn't say anything. This next sample sentence offers no more nourishment, only a misused comma-plus-'which' construction: "An introductory passage, which indicates haste and the interest that prompted it, ushers in the 'Policeman' theme." Filler also lurks in the near-desperate embroidery of: "This arm of the law advances with pomp and ceremony in slow, measured tread, not altogether unconscious of the fine picture he makes in his new uniform with bright shining buttons." What a fanciful bit of commentary that is! Where precisely in the score does one find the new uniform? Or the bright shining buttons?
All skepticism aside, I sympathize with our hapless writer. But I'm not quite so sympathetic with our writer's liner note on the Side 8 Mozart filler. He wrote only one sentence. The sentence he wrote was this:
"This sprightly overture contains portions of the loveliest melodies from Mozart's delightful opera."
Once again he has said nothing. I forgive him. But: If you're going to write only one sentence, make sure it's correct, fer krissake.
Because of course the overture to The Marriage of Figaro does not contain any melodies—lovely or not—from the opera. It is a stand-alone composition, just as are most opera overtures. I rather wonder if our anonymous liner-note guy was more attunted to records of Showboat or Floradora. It's painfully obvious that he had never heard the overture to The Marriage of Figaro.
In a way it's refreshing. I tend to assume that our forebears were generally a lot better than we are at just about everything. That's because they usually were a lot better at everything than we are.
But at least we've got the program- and liner-notes thing down a lot better than this. Or at least I hope we do. Oh, we've just got to.