After the handshake came the record. The Pope Smokes Dope. Apple Records. The Beatles' label. A street musician from the Lower East Side on the same label as Let It Be. Nobody planned that. Nobody could have planned that. A handshake next to a fountain turned into a vinyl record in a pressing plant and I still do not understand how that works but I know that it works because I held the record in my hands and it was real.

A record is a groove in plastic. That is all it is. A needle rides a groove and the groove makes a sound and the sound is a song. The whole thing is mechanical. There is nothing digital about it. There is nothing virtual about it. A groove in plastic. The same technology a phonograph used in 1877. Thomas Edison carved a groove and sound came out and a hundred years later I carved a groove and sound came out and the sound was The Pope Smokes Dope and the label said Apple.

The record was evidence. Before the record I was a guy yelling in a park. After the record I was a guy yelling in a park who had proof. The record was the proof. You could hold it. You could play it. You could hand it to somebody and say this is what the corner sounds like when you put it in a groove. The record did not change the music. The music was the same music I played on the sidewalk. The record changed the argument. The argument was whether street music was real music. The record settled it. Not because the record was better than the corner. The record was worse than the corner. The corner had the wind and the cops and the crowd. The record had a groove. But the groove was enough because the groove was proof.

I made records for Elektra. I made records for Orange. I made records for Apple. Every record was a street performance pressed into plastic. Every record lost something in the pressing. The wind was gone. The cops were gone. The drunk guy singing along was gone. What was left was the groove. And the groove was enough to carry the signal from the corner to a turntable in somebody's apartment and that was the miracle. Not the music. The delivery. The fact that a groove in plastic could carry a street corner into a living room.

Records do not exist anymore. Not really. Music is a file now. A file is not a groove. A file is math. You cannot hold math. You cannot put a needle on math. You cannot hand somebody a file and say this is what the corner sounds like. You can send them a link. A link is not the same thing. A link is a direction. A record was a destination. You held the destination in your hands. The music was in the plastic. Now the music is in a cloud and a cloud is a place nobody has ever been.

The Pope Smokes Dope is still in print. Fifty-four years later. The groove is still there. The needle still rides it. The sound still comes out. I am dead and the groove is still playing. That is what a record is. A groove that outlasts the person who made it. The corner is gone. The crowd is gone. I am gone. The groove is still there. And if you put a needle on it you can hear what the corner sounded like in 1972 when a street musician from the Lower East Side made a record with a Beatle and the label said Apple and nobody believed it but the groove does not lie.