Why Groove78?

Why, indeed. When time began for me, circa the mid-40s, film music had firmly established itself not as much via the radio, as by the gramophone disc turning around a spindle at the rate of 78 revolutions per minute. Recording companies like Columbia and New Theatres kept bakelite in business, churning out track after track of musical delight from studios in Bombay and Calcutta. The mighty HMV, though already established elsewhere in the western world, was yet to begin its forays into film music in India.

So what's all this leading to? Well, that's where we first heard our music and that's where our memories took root. In its day the '78' was no less a marvel of recording than the CD is today. There is one that still hangs framed on the wall of my living room, each groove a testimony to the hundreds of songs listened to, down the decades. Listening to the '78' recording of a song is not the same as listening to its fuller version on the CD~or even the '78' rpm version. The one was the original, the other a reproduction. Most of us from that generation, while listening to the CD hark back to the original scratch of stylus on bakelite.

Hence the name of this blog. It may not feature in future posts here, but will be the guiding force behind them all......Nor does this blog purport to reconstruct the history of music recording in cinema. The aim is to have people contribute their memories and relive their experiences of the music that has gone before today.....Once again, welcome.