---- Mary E Tyler <dejahvu@...> wrote:
> > There were fewer Jerry Bruckheimer movies in those days, so the guys
> > lacked lots of movie soundtracks full of orchestras playing new
> > macho music from the latest teen blow-'em-up-real-good action flick.
> > Lacking that, they chose, I think it is safe to say, some of the
> > absolute worst music available to them. And don't forget, it was
> > usually poorly recorded, with plenty of pops and hisses (some
> > competitors back in those days were still having their program music
> > recorded onto vinyl discs) and not much in the way of stereo
> > fidelity, edited by a rusty razor blade (no Macs in those days), and
> > all too often with the telltale loud "beep!" sound at the beginning
> > that announced where the music officially began...
> >
>
> I both skated in the early 80's and I cut my own music. And it wasn't
> done with a razor blade. It was done with a tape deck

That's because you were a conscientious soul. :-)

> and across the
> board, people used cassettes.

Maybe in your neck of the woods they did. But maybe not everywhere.

I know that as late as 1980 or so, Brian Orser was still using vinyl. I know
because I saw the record case, once, many years ago. I know "anecdote does not
equal data," but if a skater at that level was still using it, it suggests he
probably wasn't the only one.

> Now granted, at 12 I was better at
> cutting music than most of what makes it onto the skating scene these
> days. But I hardly had a Mac.

'Course not. But to do nice music edits with a cassette player took patience and
skill. Nowadays you really don't need the patience and skill, all you need is
the right software and the ability to punch keys. Of course, all the equipment
in the world isn't going to tell you why it's a jarringly bad idea to cut Music
A at this point and insert Music B at that point, which is a whole different
kettle of fish. You had probably also developed a really good sense of what
sounded aesthetically acceptable as a segue and what would stuck out like the
proverbial sore thumb no matter how smooth the technology made the transition
sound.

> It wasn't that it was impossible, simply that they didn't bother to do
> it.

True--but it's easier now to at least deal with the mechanics.

> > As a person who is only going to Keep Getting Older, I feel morally
> > obligated on occasion to provide realistic pictures of the "good old
> > days" of skating to balance out the natural human tendency to
> > misperceive the past or unfairly compare it to today.
>
> Yeah, I was too busy skating in the early to mid 80's to remember most
> of this.
>
> dej

Yeah, while people like me were voraciously watching every second of other
people skating they could get their eyes on, and only wishing we could even hope
to look that good.

I can't claim to tell the truth about skating's past from a participant's
standpoint, but from the observer's, well, I intend to keep that memory alive.
Like the memory of the days when Dick Button used to get on Wide World of Sports
and apologize to the viewers at home because the network couldn't get the ISU to
take down the rink-board advertising before a competition. To the ISU, of
course, there was nothing any more wrong with rink-board ads than with a racing
venue draped with advertising to be seen in the background while the cars
circled the track, and of course not--they were making money from it, after all.
Dick and ABC, OTOH, found it an offensive affront to the aesthetics of figure
skating, and wanted it done away with. After all, you would never see a U.S.
National Championships with all those cheesy ads plastered all over the place...

Trudi