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Have always been fascinated by design, hardware, songs and things that stand the test of time. Remnants, with credit to its owner and general manager, has stood its ground for 28 years. It has outlasted the Ipod, dial up internet, milk sago, and Multiply.
Started over 28 years ago by Remy Cabaltran, Remnants (short for Remy’s Thrift Shop) began by selling vintage newspapers from the time of the Japanese war. Remy took inspiration from her Dad who advised her to never throw away things.
These are some of the ‘trash’ and scraps that you can see in the Remnants thrift shop. Among other things like typewriters and turntables, there are vinyl records and old movies in DVD or blu-ray format
playing cards called TEX
….remnants of an era in the 70’s to the 90’s that continue to live to this day.
My Dad had an obsession with film cameras before and he used to clean them every week or so. Every picture he took had to be a masterpiece. And he would change settings on his camera for 1–2 minutes before taking the picture. His best advice was to not take pictures against the light. And that you needed to adjust the shutter speed when taking pictures at night.
Most everything we encounter nowadays have become digital. Unfortunately for film cameras of my Dad and companies like Kodak, the digital revolution has rendered them obsolete. It just takes too long to make and process a picture. And the quality of digital pictures are comparable to their film counterparts.
I thought that would be the same for vinyl records. When Apple came up with the IPOD in 2001, Jobs came up with a brilliant gadget with an equally brilliant marketing tagline that said “1000 songs in your pocket”.
A vinyl record can hold about 23 minutes of audio. If a song is 4 minutes, you can get only 5–6 songs. You certainly can’t fit 167–200 vinyl records in your pocket. It was as if Apple was sounding the death knell for vinyl or long playing (LP) records.
To date, Apple sold a total of 450M units of the IPOD, peaking in 2008 at 55M units. But it has since been rendered obsolete by Apple when they discontinued it May 2022. Streaming music did it to them.
When I listen to the music of my kids, they sound almost the same. It’s like you can attach the song to another artist or rapper and you won’t notice any difference. But if we try making the Beatles sing “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton, it won’t be the same. Or if we let Eric Clapton sing “Let it Be” it won’t be the same. It’s as if the singer and songwriter attached their signature to the song.
For the song “Let it Be” by the Beatles, Mary is the name of Paul McCartney’s mother, Mary Mohin McCartney. In the autumn of 1968, Paul McCartney was sensing the Beatles were about to break up. Just like their song of “Yesterday”, he yearned for those days when ‘troubles seemed so far away’. There were disagreements within the group and so he went clubbing, drinking, spending late nights out partying and playing hard. In one of these long nights of drunken stupor, in a bit of insomia and half-consciousness, he dreamt of his mother. (His mother died of cancer when he was just 14.)
As told to his biographer for his “Many Years from Now” book, Sir Paul recounted how reassuring his mother was during the dream. Although he couldn’t remember the exact words, something like, ‘Don’t worry too much, it will turn out ok.’ In brief moment of faith and fortitude, his mother gave him reassurance that everything will be ok, that he’ll be ok. The next morning he woke up refreshed and rejuvenated. And the song and lyrics to “Let it Be” was born. In that dream, he was reunited with his mother for a while. He wrote that song if only to preserve that virtual reunion and replay those reassuring words that whatever troubles we are in, everything will turn out right eventually.
This may be one of the reasons Why vinyl records have not died. The song has a story to tell. And if the song or album finds the right buyer, it can sell for thousands of dollars. The most expensive vinyl record for the Beatles, The Beatles (White Album), the very first copy originally owned by Ringo Starr, went for $750,000 on auction. (In Remnants, you can get some for P2k on the average. A turntable will sell for about P18k-P25k.)
Another reason for the longetivity of vinyl records is the sound quality when playing it on a turntable. It is a call back to the time when technology was still very much ‘analog’. What Steve Jobs didn’t say when he launched the IPOD was that to fit that amount of songs in a small box, they had to compress the songs in about 1–3.2Megabyte (MB) size formats. With that compression, some parts of the song that most humans cannot hear (above 23kHz) were cut.
Those that have the musical ear can detect the difference. Audiophiles, including the general manager of Remnants, still swear by the old ‘analog’ technology. They say vinyl records still has that purity and soul that MP3 songs cannot duplicate. It’s as if the singer and his song is just inside the room. Here’s the song of ‘Let it Be’ being played in the store.
Living in this fast paced world of social media trends and digital transformation, it’s good to go back once in a while to places like this thrift shop. It’s a remnant of a time when you could still stop by a tree on the side roads of Katipunan and strike a conversation with a stranger. It shows remnants of an era when songs had soul, where songs were more original and written from the heart. It’s a time when you needed to put the record to the spindle, when there was a lot more ‘process’ to get a picture done or a song played.
It’s a remnant of a time when life was slower, simpler, less complicated and troubles could be drowned, if only for a while, by playing a record of “Let it Be”.
Remnants is located in the upper ground floor of Ali Mall along a wing called Ali X, an acronym for antiques, lifestyle and interest. #cubao
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