Excellent discussion of book 'The Stone Tape" round at k-punk.
Interesting stuff ghosts/records...I'm sure folk don't need reminding about Konstantine Raudive's recordings of ghosts or (bit more obscure this) Queen Elizabeth I's doctor and celebrated Alchemist John Dee's circular spinning black plastic plate which he used to commune with spirits.
I've always thought some of the most meaningful (recorded) music, in the sense of music which fully explores the symbolic properties of both the recording process and the significance of the end result too, is that which pivots on this axis. The voices on a record are here spirits separated from their original bodies. Soul music. Dub Reggae. As Lee Perry said: "I put my mind into the machine."
Records (and CDs) are so often regarded as possessing a charge solely through their relationship to the "real" event. This connection perfectly epitomised by the LIVE recording, the record as souvenir of the concert. The best recorded music works in quite the opposite manner, by insisting rather on the properties of the object housing the recording, the spirits. This must mark the approach of the record-collector, he or she who values the recording above the incident, as one most inclined to the disembodied.
Mark closed with the reflection that as bloggers we are as inclined to the ghostly, the free-floating. That's fine I think as long as one is aware of this aspect of the activity, and is confident of the location of one's body.
Posted by Woebot at November 13, 2003 09:10 PM