Shawn Borri thinks he’s the reincarnation of Thomas Alva Edison.
A self-taught expert in the recording technologies that Edison invented, Borri likes to have fun by imitating Edison’s high, rickety voice. Borri and his business partner, Mike Loughlin, have given their new company — based in the small town of Freehold in Greene County, N.Y. — the same name as Edison’s first record label: North American Phonography Co.
They’re techies, albeit with equipment that’s more than a century old, who believe they’ve got a certain spiritual connection to the inventor.
“We both feel that Thomas Edison is in the room,” Loughlin says, “watching what we’re doing.”
What they’re doing is reviving interest, one demonstration at a time, in acoustic recordings, which were invented by Edison around 1877 and are made on wax cylinders, without microphones or any electronics. They’ve set up a simple recording studio and welcome all who are interested. They’ve also begun staging “phonographic exhibitions” to bring the old, but seemingly new, recording technique to large audiences.
“You hear something of a real live presence” with this kind of recording, Loughlin says, “like a sonic hologram. … It’s haunting.”
Edison lore
Before Loughlin and Borri first encountered one another online last year, both were already steeped in Edison lore, specifically the details surrounding two-minute wax cylinder recordings.
At the time, Loughlin, 49, was busy attempting to upload in MP3 format all the existing acoustic recordings made prior to 1928.
“I didn’t get very far,” he says, “only about 2,000 recordings.”
He was taken aback to find that Borri was doing more than collecting.
“I didn’t think anybody made wax cylinders,” says Loughlin, assuming that the world’s supply of cylinder recordings was limited to what was made a century or so ago. “It freaked me out to find him. … I thought it was a hoax, and still can’t believe it.”
Borri, 30, is a quiet, intense and wiry fellow who usually defers to Loughlin as the company spokesman. But he knows his craft well, having written approximately 100 articles for the trade journal The Collector. Since he relocated from Illinois to work with Loughlin, Borri has perfected his formula for the wax that makes new cylinders.
“I had chemistry in high school and have done thousands of hours of recording,” says Borri, who started fixing up old record players at age 12. “But where could I go to learn this?”
“Horns” is the trade name for the enormous megaphones that served as the rudimentary speaker on old record players. In acoustic recording, they also work in the other direction: to capture the sound as it is etched into the wax by a diamond or sapphire stylus.
Borri and Loughlin have a third use for horns: to capture attention. They’ve hung a pair of them on the front of their storefront on Route 32. The devices also are sure-fire attention-getters when they go on the road; earlier this year, a horn showed up at a concert by the Grateful Dead.
An anachronism
In the designated “tapers area,” where Deadheads are allowed to set up their microphones and recorders, the acoustic technology was an anachronism.
“People came flocking to it,” says Loughlin, who also went backstage to give a demonstration to the Dead’s percussionist, Mickey Hart.
Hart’s interest was more than mere curiosity: A noted advocate of the preservation of vintage recordings, Hart has recently published a book on the subject, “Songcatchers: In Search of the World’s Music” (National Geographic, 192 pages, $30). He also is an adviser to the recording divisions of the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.
Upon hearing a bit of the Dead played on a cylinder, Hart reportedly told Loughlin, “This is my book come to life.”
Also this year, North American Phonograph Co. gave demonstrations at Strawberry Fields, the oasis in New York’s Central Park where fans gather to remember the late John Lennon.
Among the interested passers-by was artist and performer Pablo Helguera. He has since integrated the phonograph, with Borri as an onstage technician, into “Parallel Lives,” a piece that was performed recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
“We want musicians to come and check this out,” says Loughlin, eager for more such associations. “We’ll make one free recording.”
“There are thousands of collectors all over the country and hundreds of thousands of cylinder-type phonographs still around,” says Peter Dig, who runs Wizard Cylinder Record Co. in Baldwin, on Long Island.
Dig helps supply that market by making new cylinders, usually of vintage recordings, using blanks obtained from overseas. He sees North American Phonograph Co. as friendly competition.
“This supplies people with new recordings which are still old,” he says, referring to the work of both companies.
A hub for collectors on the Web is Nauck’s Vintage Records (www.78rpm.com) where monthly auctions of cylinders draw hundreds of bidders.
“The work they do is incredible,” says owner Kurt Nauck, who is based in Houston and has met Borri and Loughlin at trade shows. “They certainly seem to have a following.”
Barry Smith, a collector from Basking Ridge, N.J., commissioned Borri to make cylinders of recordings by 50 Cent, Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen and Dave Brubeck. He hopes the contemporary music will pique his 13-year-old son’s interest in cylinders.”All I had was music that no one knows,” Smith says.
A love of antiques
Loughlin’s interest in old technologies is an extension of his work in antiques. A frequent visitor to estate sales, he regularly stumbles across collections of vintage recordings.
His most important find came just this year in the nearby town of Leeds. Amid a small collection of wax cylinders, he discovered two with the voice of Edison. They are, as it turns out, the only recordings of Edison not already owned by the U.S. government.
Loughlin is acting as a broker for the eventual sale of the two cylinders. He expects that each should yield at least $10,000 at auction.
It’s just one more connection to Edison to fuel the efforts and spirit of North American Phonograph Co.
“Edison produced 50,000 recordings, but he never got a Grammy,” says Loughlin, who explains that the award was named after the gramophone, which was the competitor to Edison’s original invention, the phonograph.
“If it was named after his original machine,” he says, “it would be the Phony.”
