Gazing at a Music Centre

It was two days ago, the 1st December, and the last day of the all-England lockdown. I didn't relish wading through Sussex mud on a country walk, so thought instead of walking the streets of a town. Central Brighton was too much of a health risk in daytime - in fact I haven't walked there since March - but Hove seemed a better proposition, being quieter and on the whole more spacious, with plenty of wide residential streets. I reckoned it would be easy to avoid close encounters with anyone who might be a Covid-19 carrier.

Actually, I was wrong. Hove was busier than I thought, and I had to constantly dodge people who seemed unaware that there was a pandemic still going on. It wasn't exactly nerve-racking, but it put me off making any repeat visit to Blatchington Road and George Street in Hove, which together form the main shopping area there. Especially now that all shops are open again under the new Tier system, and even more people will be out and around. I'll get my vaccination first!

Most shops were still closed two days ago, of course, but I had a good look in their windows. And I saw this, in the front window of the Hove YMCA Furniture Shop, which sells second-hand furniture. It was a Murphy 'Stereo Music Centre' from the 1970s, with matching medium-sized speakers off to the left and right. 

Murphy was one of those British-sounding maker-names for electronic products that were around in the 1970s and earlier. I can remember other names of the same kind - such as Bush, Sobell, Ferguson, PYE, Thorn, and of course Philips, nearly all now gone. There were also more exotic brands too, like Grundig and Bang & Olufsen - but these were always much more expensive, and not mass-market. 

On this model, the Rank logo is shown - a top all-round entertainment organisation at the time, particularly famous for its films and its ballrooms. Not that I ever went 'uptown Top Ranking', except just the once in the 1980s. 

I gazed at this Murphy Music Centre fascinated. A fresh take on the old radiogram, the Music Centre was a 1970s innovation, bringing together a turntable, cassette tape deck and VHF radio in one large audio ensemble, all three components sharing common electronics. There would be 'advanced' controls that would let you finely adjust bass, treble, speaker balance and other things, with Dolby noise suppression thrown in too. Unknowledgeable potential buyers would be wowed by the plethora of switches and lights, and (as in this example) a couple of dials that actually lit up. 

It must have been a salesman's dream: he could waffle on about the sound experience the potential buyer would enjoy, and bamboozle them with spurious terminology from the Hi-Fi world. Whether a run-of-the-mill Music Centre ever really produced a genuine Hi-Fi sound is a matter for debate. The one Mum and Dad had, and the ones I encountered in other homes, all reliably produced plenty of music, but surely none of them would ever have delighted a proper Hi-Fi enthusiast. However, they looked great and did the job. 

The long, wide layout didn't last. It took up too much horizontal space. By the 1980s the 'Music Centre' had evolved into the 'Home Audio System' where the components were stacked one on top of each other, the turntable topmost. And there were fancier-looking tuning knobs, and lever switches, and sliders - all intended to impress a fresh (and equally naïve) generation of buyers. There would also now be a CD player to complete the audio line-up. 

Soundwise, everything these mass-market devices could ever accomplish can now be had by listening to music streamed to one's smartphone from the Cloud (or installed on the phone) with earbuds, or a speaker, connected via Bluetooth. Music has gradually gone completely mobile, a trend that started with the Sony Walkman and its imitators in the 1980s. The Music Centres and audio stacks of forty or fifty years ago were strictly for family listening at home.  

The Murphy in the shop window was obviously meant to be a posh item of furniture, and not merely a music-playing device. It was shaped like a sideboard, that long low cupboard-on-legs that every home once had for storing glassware and cutlery, and perhaps a Singer sewing machine. The orangey wood is teak, a wood that's been long out of fashion, although to my mind it was (and still is) quite attractive, and a better, warmer colour than the pale woods now favoured. The side doors would open up to reveal the LP collection on one side, singles on the other. The drawers would house the cassette tapes. Altogether, the perfect acquisition if you fancied some Perry Como or Connie Francis while the Sunday breakfast was cooking. I was once (while staying over at a friend's in 1978) treated to the entire soundtrack of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical Evita on a Music Centre. Don't Cry For Me Argentina, Oh What A Circus, and all that. 

Back to 2020. Just around the corner in George Street was a shop that had a display of old records in its window. 

My goodness. Helen Reddy. Simply Red. Sister Sledge. I wonder who listens to them now. Come to that, am I the only Andy Williams fan still around? I listened to his version of the title song from the 1970 film Love Story in the bathroom this morning (on my JBL speaker, bluetoothed from my phone) and was moved. They don't make songs like that any more. But then I always thought that Andy Williams' voice, and his arrangements, added something extra to the songs he recorded. I could say the same of that other 1970s stalwart, Neil Diamond. 

I wonder if they were ever played on that Murphy Music Centre? Or was it just bought to impress, and never used much?