45 @ six-0

A bit busy over at mytea@om towers, due to the fact of organising another of our events, Club PI. But i thought a little happy birthday to the humble 45rpb vinyl single. who is 60 years young today..
With the onslaught of the digital world, pundits and commentators alike have reported the demise of vinyl records and especially the 45rpm single or 7" inch as we call it in europe, but the complete opposite is the reality. Since 2006 vinyl sales have been increasing as the new youth generation discover the joys of owning the warmth, hiss, crackle and pop of vinyl. There is a patten emerging that young people in their 20`s have had enuff of the clinical sound of digital and are returning to the retro treats of the original pop sound of their parents generation. Sure the vinyl renaissance will never outsell their digital formats any time soon, but it`s encouraging to see nonetheless.
I bought my first 7" inch in 1974.





In those days I used to work weekends on my cousins stall in Piccadilly Circus. After work on saturdays he would pay me and i would rush into SoHo, before the record shops would close and just love to see all the records hanging up around the walls and the punters busily digging through the racks. It would be 20 years later that I would open my own record shop `ATLAS` in Archer Street.
Even as I have embraced the digital era, djing with both CD and mp3`s and vinyl, I feel the future lies in a mixture of both analog and digital formats living side by side in a sort of unity of sound. What has become sad though is that whole genres of music could be lost to vinyl forever, please read the link below that tells the story of how Reggae on vinyl is becoming completely extinct.

In Jamaica vinyl has been eliminated.

A Little Bit Of History.

The first ever produced 45 was released by RCA victor in 1949 by the country/western singer Eddy Arnold a track caled Texarkana Baby , pressed on green vinyl in line with RCA’s early plan to colour-code singles according to genre...which were as follows - Pop...black, Classical...red, Popular Classical..midnight blue, Children's...yellow, Country and Western...green, Rhythm and Blues...Cerise (LOL! not orange), International...sky blue.
The new format was too encourge the record buying public into a new era of hi-fidelity recordings on a nonbreakable vinyl with just 7 inches across and weighing 1.1 oz, compairing favorably with the older 78rpm`s which were much heavier and easily breakable. The reproduction quality of the 45 took 10 years research by the RCA engineers to develope. God bless `em. What they achived was to dominate the recorded music industry until the advent of the digital CD.
Beginning with the onset of Rock 'n' Roll the music brought the 7" its great success as the youth strongly favoured the format. Sales of 45`s overtook 78`s in 1958, this was the boom years of record sales. During the next few years the UK was to become a major source of popular recorded music with the advent of the British 'beat' groups, This was the 'golden era' for the 45, however by the end of the 1960`s sales of the 45 had begun to decline. While 12"extended singles were introduced for use by DJ`s in the disco`s of the 70`s, sales continued to decline until 2006.

How to make a 7 inch single