One of my favorite YouTube genres is of turntables playing records. It must be the ex-DJ in me. One of the best examples is from a woman in England named Liz, whose channel is called 78s4FR.
http://www.youtube.com/user/78s4FR
Here’s a sample. Stan Freberg’s superb parody of Harry Belafonte’s ‘Banana Boat Song’, followed by the equally great ‘Tele-Vee-Shun’.
Note for younger readers: Because a shellac 78 could hold only a few minutes of sound, record albums used to be exactly that — multiple discs in an album book. Later, vinyl LP’s could hold up to 30 minutes in mono, yet there were still albums. In a 2-disc LP set, side 1 was backed with side 4, and sides 2 and 3 were on the same disc, so they could be played in sequence on a changer. The arm on the changer held the stack steady. When playing a single record, with the arm in the position shown in the video above, most changers repeated the record.
Funn-EE! It’s no secret to Doug that I’m a rabid fan of YouTubes’s WABCradio77, a guy about our age whose life mission is to collect and play every promo copy of every hit single from the 60s that aired on WABC AM 77. I’m a subscriber, natch. Of course, as Doug has pointed out, WABC played promo copies only once, to record to tape cartridges, and the disc jockeys weren’t real disc jockeys at all, but on-air personalities. I told this to WABCradio77, and of course, he already knew that, but still likes to post the promos because he’s a stickler for the mono originals of the old songs. Of course, some songs DID come out in stereo. His proudest new possession? You guessed it: the Beatles Remasters, in MONO, of course.