Back in the groove

摘要

On October the 3rd 1996, after a concert by Steve Reich And Musicians at The Royal Festival Hall to mark the American composer's 60th birthday, this writer presented him with the LP sleeve of his 1978 album Music For 18 Musicians, and asked him to autograph it. This prompted some amusement on his part. 'I haven't seen one of these in a while,' he said chuckling, 'have you borrowed it from a museum?' Such is the way we laugh at things that have become unfashionable or obsolete - we can add brick-sized mobile phones, Video 2000 systems and MiniDiscs to the list. In the first decade of the new millennium, the joke was that if you mentioned records to a teenager they would respond with 'What's a record?'.