For Those About To Rock

Compact discs not vanishing anytime soon

Recently, I was spinning some wax on my turntable when I got a great chuckle out of the inner sleeve of one of my records.

“Here’s how records give you more of what you want,” reads Columbia Records’ advertisement for itself. “The best for less: Records give you top quality for less money than any other recorded form.”

Judging by the dates on the sleeve, this is from an early 1970s printing of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” which I imagine means Columbia was combating the proliferation of 8-track tapes, which started coming installed in cars in the late ’60s.

But I was thinking if you flash forward about 40 years, the language seems oddly topical.

The sleeve continues: “They allow selectivity of songs and tracks. With records, it’s easy to pick out the songs you want to play or to play again a particular song or side. . . . You can’t do this as easily with anything but a phonograph record.”

One music message board I frequent recently said the compact disc’s future is coming to an end soon, but since CDs still make up about three-quarters of all records sold, I doubt discs will disappear anytime before the NBA starts playing hoops again.

“They’re the top quality in sound. . . . Countless refinements and developments have been made to perfect the long-playing record’s technical excellence and insure the best in sound reproduction and quality available in recorded form.”

Though vinyl’s comeback is understandable, one resurgence I cannot fathom is the slow, steady push to resurrect cassette tapes, which again reared its head earlier this week when I heard the announcement that Dinosaur Jr. will re-release its first three albums in a limited-edition cassette box set. Though a friend recently expressed nostalgia for Pocket Rockers, we agreed that all forms of cassette should stay in the ’80s.

“Record albums are never out of place. . . .  Because they’re flat and not bulky, you can store hundreds in a minimum of space and still see every title.”

Inevitably, the message board crew agreed that the CD will diminish and become more of a collector’s item. Those truly dedicated fans will shell out for the luxurious box set, which labels seem content to continue making more and more lavish and expensive at a time when wallets are shrinking.

Perhaps the saddest thing that will happen as a corollary will be the decline of the independent record store. Big-time retailers such as Walmart, Target or Best Buy may sell the bulk of the records in this country, but their selections are continually shrinking and lacking for those who want to find much beyond the top 40.

The independent record stores have been hurt the most by the dawning of music’s digital age and it’s a descent that will only continue. While one of the board’s users suggested they’ll go the route of Blockbuster Video stores, I have to imagine a sprinkling of stores will survive, stocking the shelves with the latest releases and bringing in old material for faithful collectors such as me.

“They’ll give you hours of continuous and uninterrupted listening pleasure. Just stack them up on your automatic changer and relax.”

Vinyl died and was reborn and then mysteriously saved, to alter a line from one of my favorite Dylan songs, “Oh, Sister.” Thanks to items I inherited from my father and grandfather, my collection dates from the 1940s through the mid ’80s and then starts again in the early 2000s.

I don’t see the compact disc becoming as obsolete as a pager or a VCR cassette, although Apple has already started to stop putting optical drives in some of its merchandise, a sign some have interpreted as the first step in the disc’s death. They said the same when the same Silicon Valley-based fruit company stopped putting floppy disk drives in its systems, so who knows?

I do see compact discs continuing to become more of a collector’s item, slowly fading into obscurity the same way that vinyl and cassette tapes did for an earlier generation.

But I think it’s a bit premature to be talking about the death of the CD. Besides, you never know how a format will endure and persevere . . .

“And remember, it always happens first on records!”

Can you sing along and not even know it?

The human body is a mechanical marvel.

Think about how many systems work without any user input: Blood flows, air circulates, limbs move the instant the thought occurs.

All of those are unquestioned, accepted, verified scientific knowledge.

But can some of these systems operate without someone even knowing it? More specifically, can a person sing without knowing it?

The source of this question comes from repeated moments in my own car, where I definitely belt it out.

I’ve been accused of being a big mouth, so the idea that my mouth could be open without being aware of it doesn’t strike me as unlikely.

I’ll be driving and singing along with anything from beloved favorites such as Dave Matthews Band (Crash, at right), Radiohead and My Morning Jacket to guilty pleasures such as Jay-Z, Coldplay and John Mayer when my mind floats away: “Did I text my friend back? Did I take the garbage out? How am I gonna get to the gym another day a week? Well, if I try to go on Thursday before work . . . ”

That spirals into other thoughts, strands of deep, critical thinking as I frog hop from one mental lily pad to another.

Something always snaps me back. My train of thought ends or someone starts beeping at me to sputter through the light seconds before it turns red again.

This is highway hypnosis or white-line fever, when the road lulls you into a trance for miles at a time. Your mind takes a vacation and puts other tasks on auto pilot.

It’s scary, but it happens.

More worrisome, though, is when I snap out of the road’s spell and I’m singing along to my stereo.

I immediately worry if was singing along that whole time and, more frightful, if I was, where else do I sing along and not know it?

It’s happened often enough that I’ve given it a name: Subconscious singing.

Yeah, I got 99 problems and singing aloud to myself is one.

So I started keeping track. Apparently, I have a highly refined sense for when it’s appropriate.

When I’m on the elliptical machine at the gym, rockin’ some Creedence Clearwater Revival, I keep rollin’ on a riv-ah exclusively in my head.

I am known to mutter-sing to myself when I think no one is paying attention, such as walking into a building or standing by myself at a BART station waiting for the train.

My highly refined sense tells me I instinctively know “The Unspoken Rules About Singing Out Loud.”

•  Singing at a concert you’re attending? Perfectly OK.

•  Singing in your car: Might get you stares at red lights, especially if the windows are down, but it’s fairly acceptable.

•  Singing while standing in line at the grocery store, leaving others to question your sanity: Strictly verboten. You look like one of those people with a Bluetooth headset who, at first glance, appears to be having a vigorous conversation with themselves.

So, the phenomenon seems exclusive to the car. How can I verify “subconscious singing” exists?

I have two solutions, both of which require going to ridiculous lengths.

One is to record myself while driving. I could go back and play the recording later.

One friend, Madelyn, offered to sneak a recorder into my car so I won’t know it’s there, but I don’t think either of us wants to hear the playback — I’m not tone deaf, but one of the The Three Tenors, I ain’t.

It also seems gold star, Kanye West-level self-involved to listen to oneself drive a car.

I’ll know I’m recording myself, so the Hawthorne effect, when someone who knows he or she is being watched and it changes their normative behavior, would be in effect.

So recording myself is out. The other idea is to drive around with a friend and purposefully try to let my mind wander, but that requires the passenger/driver to focus on me instead of the road. Try to find the flaw in that plan, huh?

I guess I'll never know. For the time being, I’ll have to be content with the fact that I can breathe, pump blood and blink my eyes automatically.

And, thankfully, that I have some sort of filter that prevents me from singing “99 Problems” aloud in the cereal aisle.

Viewers desire authenticity in special effects

Desperate to escape a blazing inferno that is engulfing his sociopathic ex-girlfriend’s apartment, Dexter Morgan capes himself in a blanket, lowers his shoulder and plows into a wall, weakening it until he bursts through it to safety.

The action services the plot, but one thing distracts from the flow of this particular episode of “Dexter” from a few seasons back — it’s obviously a (view at your own risk) special-effects shot.

The fact that it was so easy to spot as such shows a truth that has never changed about visual effects in film. We want to be wowed, but we don’t want our attention to be drawn to it.

Viewers want authenticity in their visual fakery.

It’s a truth that dates back decades. Orson Welles’ magnum opus, 1941′s “Citizen Kane,” is highlighted frequently for its cinematography, but one overlooked fact is its high number of special-effects shots. In a time before computer graphics, that meant something different.

Kane’s famous political rally scene is optical trickery, a patchwork of carefully chosen camera angles and drawings. The viewer is hardly aware of the fact that the entire scene is a fabrication that took place on a sound stage rather than in an arena with thousands of supporters.

In another scene, large swathes of cloth substituted for ceilings, allowing Welles to raise and lower them as needed for the desired effect.

Exterior shots of buildings were elaborate drawings, sometimes blended into the same frame as existing structures.

Viewers today hardly notice these moves and, often, neither did those in 1941. The goal was to minimize drawing attention to the effects, as it still is.

The rise of computer graphics ushered in a period when we wanted our attention drawn to which shots were special effects.

Considering it was released on Blu-ray less than two months ago, the two “Star Wars” trilogies illustrate this nicely. The older trilogy focuses on natural, in-camera trickery such as miniatures, matte painting and blue screens.

The modern trilogy has gorgeous, large-scale pans, swooping camera angles and a duel between a 2-foot-tall green Jedi Master (Yoda, right) and a human.

The newer trilogy may do more to call viewers’ attention to the fact that certain shots use special effects, but the end game for all six films is that it doesn’t drawn attention to itself as such.

Unfair as it may be to judge a single moment in a television show against movies in general, the “Dexter” example shows the bar is even higher now. We want seamless effects work that does not scream out that it is such.

2009′s “Avatar” shows this demand. It was a massive success largely because of the believability of its effects. It was a lush, colorful oasis. Some viewers left depressed it didn’t actually exist.

A large percentage of the film required special effects, especially creating the surface of a futuristic moon of an alien species in such vivid detail.

The quality and detail of the effects made the world of Pandora believable. It never distracted from the plot to see floating mountains, horse-like creatures with gills or the protagonist jumping on the back of an enormous flying reptile in midair.

The entire world is a fabrication and, yet, because of the caliber of the effects, we were able to ignore the fact that none of it was real and embrace it.

Making us believe what we see — that’s what we want, no matter what the era.

Whether it’s aliens on a fictitious planet or the serial killer title character of a TV series bursting through a wall, it’s clear that when it comes to special effects in film, we want things to feel real.