STEREO IS LIKE BEER:
In 1970 I got my first taste of stereo when Mont invited me
round to his house to hear his dad’s new headphones. I’d never worn
headphones before, only seen them in Bond films & had no experience of
stereo ‘up-close’, never imagining I’d ever be able to afford it.
Mont was the bass player in our band, one’ve the older lads at school
who’d tracked me down, inspired by The Travelling Salesman.
He came from a family just across the boarder into Middle Class.
His dad was a draughtsman or something similar (there was an appealing
artiness about him but also a heavy presence of pressure unlike
anything I’d associated with art). The family lived in the posh
bit of the other council estate over on the West side of the river &
though Mont knew all the members of the local gangs his passion for
bass kept him learning new riffs & off the street.
The headphones were fat & white, with a fat black leather pad that
curved over the top of your head, bit’s of expensive looking chrome &
a curly black wire connecting them to a bunch of illuminated boxes.
When I walked in Mont was giving a considered performance,
lay on the floor, eyes closed, trancing out, a thin & tinny sound
emanating from his head.
“You gotta hear these things!” he said, grinning, like he knew
he was about to give me to a life changing experience.
The Groundhogs new album ‘Split’ was on the the turn table, a
seductive black & white picture of a guitar legend having a
transcendent experience on it’s sleeve was strategically positioned
for me to see. As I lay back, he put the needle into the best groove
& grinned as I slipped the heavy spheres over my ears. What I found
confused me, it was unlike anything I’d ever heard but didn’t sound
right, felt unnatural, limited, didn’t blow me away, so I faked a
grin,
“Yeah, great!”
The sound was too close, too synthetic, an approximation of natural
spacial information, a caricature of nature, it made life sound smaller.
It was interesting, but less than real life had to offer & I was going to
have to relearn how to listen if I was ever going to enjoy this new toy.
“Isn’t it fantastic!?”
“Yeah, it’s…amm…fantastic” I swerved, buying time to learn how to
love it, remembering how the first time I tasted beer I’d hated it, but
knew I’d have to learn to like it, if I wanted to be a man.
(K)
Karl Hyde 
My first experience (early 70’s too) was Simon & Garfunkel’s Baby Driver – the final seconds of engine noise as the car pulls away and pans from left to right – spellbound.
…then my brother left me alone in a room with Dark Side Of The Moon and everything changed…
my first experience with stereo was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I heard it with headphones at a party in 1967 when it was first released. The next day I took my MONO copy back to the record store and exchanged it for the stereo version. ($1.00 more). Then I had to go out and but a stereo record player which took me another year before I could afford one! But I wish I still had that MONO copy now!