E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Scythian (continued)

Time is wasting, however, and I still haven’t had my mind blown. "Give him the Scythian!" Monoman yells. Not quite, Pat has one more trick up his sleeve. This time it’s Louis Armstrong. The disc is Satchmo Plays King Oliver, a 1962 release on the Audio Fidelity label. It’s theoretically from the dark ages, when stereo recording was still in its infancy. But damn, now we’re talking revelation. Every note on this thing is beautifully vivid, and it doesn’t hurt that the music (the New Orleans standard "St. James Infirmary") is stellar. My memories of a lesser Louis Armstrong doing "Hello Dolly" or the sentimental "What a Wonderful World" (a song I’d rank down there with "She’s Leaving Home") are melting away by the minute. And here I’m learning one of the secrets: that good stereo sound is a psychedelic experience. I’m not just seeing Satchmo’s horn, I’m seeing the shape of the notes and the color of the sound. When he sings, I’m looking deep down into his throat while the drums and bass push me from behind. So now I understand why a lot of record collectors don’t do drugs — when they crank that stereo up, they’re already doing one.

Every vinyl junkie has a moment like this, when the sound hits you between the eyes and you’re hooked for life. Pat got the rush when "Be My Baby" by the Ronnettes was blaring from a car radio. Producer Phil Spector made that record to be overwhelming — with its massive drums and heavenly choir — and in Pat’s case (and that of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, who also loved the record) it did the trick. As for Monoman, he gets re-initiated every time he discovers a new medium. Lately his drug of choice is reel-to-reel tapes, the ones that were issued in the ’60s and only played in high-class bachelor pads. "It’s the Hugh Hefner thing. Those tapes were the high-end item, the compact disc of their day. The goal is to get as close to the master tape as possible. That’s where the reel tapes bring me, and the turntable is another path."

It’s getting late, however, and though Louis Armstrong started me down the path, I’ve still got a foot in the real world. So now it’s time to pull out the heavy artillery, as they prepare to give me the Scythian. That would be the Scythian Suite by Prokofiev, but not just any copy. This is the 1957 recording by Antal Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra on the Mercury label — one of the first stereo recordings ever issued. The legend "Mercury Living Presence" blazes proudly across the cover; the same design is still there on the current compact-disc edition. But we’re looking to get close to the master tape and deep into the music, and the preferred path is that original 1957 pressing, made while the master tape was likely still throbbing. Pat produces the item from the middle of a stack, in a dark corner of his collection. "Is that a real one?" asks Monoman, raising his eyes. Pat nods his head with proper gravity. This is starting to look like the glow-box scene from Pulp Fiction — hell, maybe a pristine copy of the Scythian Suite was the box’s mysterious contents.

"Just feel how round that edge is," notes Pat, running a finger around the LP’s circumference. "Yeah, it’s the real deal," Monoman nods. The glossy laminated cover is also studied, and the disc’s runout groove is inspected for the distinguishing mark: the letter "I" stamped into a small circle. That stands for Indianapolis, which means the record was stamped at that city’s RCA plant — in other words the record is like any good fix, clean and uncut by cheap additives. As Pat bears it to the turntable, Monoman gives the music some perspective: "Those Scythians, man, they were fuckin’ pagans! Human sacrifices, you name it." I have been warned.

Maybe Pat’s discreetly jacked up the bass and treble, maybe he’s slipped something in my tea. In any case, the Scythian starts and all hell breaks loose. A big unearthly screech — that’s the strings making fire-and-brimstone noises. A roll of thunder from dangerously close — that’s the orchestral bass drums. "AAAH! We’re all gonna fuckin’ die!" — that’s Monoman feeling the spirit, running around the room with hair shaking and shirttail flying. If Prokofiev wasn’t aiming for exactly that response, I’m sure that whoever engineered the record was. The roller-coaster construction of the piece only helps the effect: there are a few moments of deceptive calm before the thunder starts up again, this time with added gongs. "That’s it, that’s heavy metal!" is Monoman’s reaction, his shouts becoming a perfectly fitting vocal part. "Hey, Led Zeppelin — you suck!’

This is where the addiction starts: when the music and the sound get so beautifully overwhelming that you wouldn’t mind devoting a chunk of your life to more of the same. For now, the purple vacuum tubes are starting to calm down, and any more music would be overkill. Pat can take pride in making another convert, and Monoman can come down off his vinyl high. "The Scythian, man. Can’t get enough of it."

Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting will be published by Griffin Trade Paperback on November 1. A book-release party will be held on November 6, at 10 p.m., at ZuZu, in Cambridge. Brett Milano reads from the book on November 17, at 7 p.m., at WordsWorth Books, in Cambridge. He can be reached at muso@mindspring.com