The Glass Record

Next month, Philip Glass is coming to the Chan Center. Looking at the ad in the Georgia Straight, I recalled the first time I heard of him.

A callow university student recently arrived from the hinterland, I was listening to a conversation between my seminar professor and some very arty students.

"Have you heard the new glass record?" he asked.

They had. They raved about it, the pristine sound, and so on.

I thought it was a new kind of technology. My mind went off on its own little track, trying to imagine how the vinyl in the long play records, or LPs, could be replaced by glass. How could they lay the tracks on glass? And why? After all, plastic was much cheaper.

Fortunately I kept my mouth shut. It was many months later when I saw the name Philip Glass, and put two and two together.

Ah, the callowness of youth. Sometimes I feel an irrational nostalgia for that very naivete.