The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 1011: A History of Lo-Fi
For the first 60 years of the recorded music industry, things sounded awful. The quality of recordings people had to put up with was terrible. The old 78 RPM records played on gramophones were no match when it came to hearing music played live. We didn’t have the technology to capture audio so that when we listened back, it sounded real.
That began to change in the late 1940s with the introduction of vinyl records: the 233 1/2 RPM vinyl album and the 7-inch 45 RPM single. Things got even better with the switch to magnetic recording tape and all its technical advantages in the early 1950s.
We got new microphones, better tape machines, and a better understanding of acoustics and electronics when it came to designing recording studios. Then came better turntables, amplifiers, and speakers. Recorded audio finally began to sound like the real thing.
In the middle 50s, people started to hear about something pitched as “high-fidelity.” It was a marketing term invented by the new home audio industry to describe equipment capable of reproducing music properly. Once stereo recordings came along in the LATE 50s, music fans went wild and started buying hi-fi gear for their homes, Then their cars. Then for going mobile.
And so began an endless pursuit for perfect sound, music that was loud, clean, clear, and accurate, Recordings studios were in a constant state of retrofitting and refurbishment because artists and producers demanded the best for their music.
That was the 1970s. In the 1980s, there was a reaction, a backlash, an artistic regression, after the introduction of the compact disc. For some, music had become too perfect, too shiny, too unreal, They felt it contained none of the natural imperfections that made it human. Beauty, they thought, was in the mistakes. That’s what made music authentic, Audio quality mattered less than being able to listen to music that obviously came straight from the heart.
These music fans even had a name for their approach. If the best-sounding audio was “high-fidelity,” then what they wanted was the opposite: “low-fidelity.” And that esthetic continues today. This is the history of lo-fi music,
Songs heard on this show:
- The Exies, Lo-Fi
- Velvet Undergound, All Tomorrow’s Parties
- Elvis Costello, Welcome to the Working Week
- R. Stevie More, I’ve Begun to Fall in Love
- Daniel Johnston, Walking the Cow
- Beat Happenbing, Our Secret
- REM, Radio Free Europe (Hib-Tone version)
- Tall Dwarfs, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
- Jesus and Mary Chain, On the Wall
- Beck, Loser
- Pavement, Summer Babe
Here’s a playlist from Eric Wilhite.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
- Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
- Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
- FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
- Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 11pm
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
- The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
- The Fox/Vancouver – Sunday at 11pm
- Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm
- We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.
