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The Long-player Goodbye: How Vinyl Changed the World
 
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The Long-player Goodbye: How Vinyl Changed the World (Hardcover)

by Travis Elborough (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
Price: £11.49 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

The Long-player Goodbye: How Vinyl Changed the World + Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting + Last Shop Standing: Whatever Happened to Record Shops?
Price For All Three: £25.57

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  • This item: The Long-player Goodbye: How Vinyl Changed the World by Travis Elborough

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  • Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting by Brett Milano

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  • Last Shop Standing: Whatever Happened to Record Shops? by Graham Jones

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 468 pages
  • Publisher: Sceptre (10 Jul 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340934107
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340934104
  • Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 14.6 x 4.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 144,886 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Daily Telegraph

'Pleasingly compelling... Elborough is a charming, funny and frequently fascinating guide.'


Review

For The Bus We Loved: 'A charming account of the capital's enduring affair with its favourite piece of transport.' (Daily Mail )

'An undiluted delight - witty and whimsical' (Daily Telegraph )

A pocket- sized production as sleek as the vehicle it elegises. (London Review of Books )

For The Long-Player Goodbye (... )

'it reads like a PG Wodehouse guide to pop history’ (Times )

'definitely one for the format-nostalgic' (Telegraph )
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The Long-player Goodbye: How Vinyl Changed the World
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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (3)
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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars surface barely scratched, 13 Nov 2008
By L. Williams "larsbar" (Glasgow) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book purports to be a history of the vinyl LP, its rise, decline and (slight) return, but it is really just another potted history of mainstream popular music from the '60s to the present day. It's a shame, because it starts out so well - the first third of the book tells the story of the development of the vinyl long-player in fascinating and apparently well-researched detail. If the author had kept this up throughout, the book would have been great. Unfortunately, by chapter 6 he seems to have run out of anything to say about the format itself, and reverts instead to a plodding and over-familiar exposition of popular music from the Beatles through psychedelia, prog, punk, post-punk, so on. I'm guessing that the target audience for this book is made up of Mojo-reading anoraks who will know this stuff back to front anyway, so really, what is the point? And the author has a wearying tendency to fall back into glib cliche (for example, "...after the murder of a fan at Altamont in 1969, [the Rolling Stones] retreated into a cocoon of coke and morphine"....Of course! That was what got them started). The story isn't helped by a surprising number of mis-spellings and minor, but annoying, inaccuracies.

Overall, this is a missed opportunity, a good idea poorly executed. So many potentially interesting facets of vinyl culture are not covered at all (as a previous reviewer notes, developments in audio engineering are not even touched on), or mentioned only in passing (the gatefold sleeve, cover art, quadrophonic sound, mysterious pressing plant inscriptions on the runout groove, etc). The eventual decline of the format is given about 2 pages, the recent surge in interest / sales a few sentences. There is a whole book about this fascinating subject still waiting to be written.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I Just Loved This, 22 Nov 2008
By Mr. G. Williams "garax" (Bedford) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
One of those subjects that just seems to consist of curious little facts, petty rivalries, greed, beauty and art. The Long Player Goodbye is a sterling attempt to squash the history of the long player record into a relatively concise and certainly entertaining romp about a subject that touches so many. Perfect bath time reading.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Amusing sashay through the madness of the music world, 29 Aug 2008
This often laugh-out loud, pin-sharp account of the various interlocking stories behind the vinyl LP's success is rather wonderful. Elborough has clearly aimed to make a details-driven book for a non-music-nerd audience and the book achieves this balance rather well. The author seems to be something of an emerging specialist on social history with an eyebrow raised (the author's other book was a similarly broad review of the history and demise of the Routemaster bus - a long time feature of London's streets) and a similar approach is used here. The chapters on the insane amounts of smooth and easy listening that shifted in the 50s and 60s are a particular highlight, particularly resonant as one considers the maddening success of the likes of James Blunt... Hmmm... And as one might have expected given its now-stricken state, most of the music industry's success with the LP seems to be a series of domino-style accidents, a point the author captures nicely. A top read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Curl Up For A Lovely Little Read........
For anyone with the faintest interest in vinyl, this is a lovely little book that will inform and delight. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr Paul English

2.0 out of 5 stars Long Yawner Goodbye (Now where's my next book?)
More padding than a Police Dog Trainer's trouser crotch!

One might wonder if an account of the Lp record could stretch to 468pages (including pretentious Bibliography... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Mrs. Yvonne Murphy

2.0 out of 5 stars An Author In Search of a Proofreader
It seems churlish to criticise a book that cites so many sources, which imply that Elborough did his homework, but fat bibliographies do not ensure accuracy. Read more
Published 15 months ago by K-Square

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