09-3-12

I got a record player the other day. It's the first one I've ever owned though I'm no stranger to records. I grew up on records. I have a couple hundred of them, or well over a hundred anyway. Since getting the record player I've picked up five, maybe six records because I quickly realized my back catalogue of vinyl was informed by very immature musical taste. I acknowledge the role that Quiet Riot played in my development but I maybe don't need to hear it again now that I'm an adult. On the other hand there's records in my collection that I haven't heard in years that I am happy to experience again, like Jackie O by John Couger (no Mellencamp yet) set to an organ more suited to your grandmother's basement than a rock and roll record.

I don't buy the argument that vinyl sounds better than digital. It's a thin argument at best. Vinyl is never superbly clean so there's always interference from little bits of entropy that gather in the grooves. Since getting this record player I've "back to backed" a couple of records that I've managed to collect on both vinyl and CD and to my ears the CD ever so slightly edges the vinyl for clarity and depth of sound. Of course I don't have the world's best record player though it's not a bad one either.

But I do find the format interesting. All my life music has endeavored to become more portable. It went from records to 8-Tracks which were bulky but certainly more easily played in a car. Then there were audio cassettes which were amazing. You could throw a player on your belt and block out all the world's problems. ("I had so many problems and then I got me a walkman." - Frank Black) Of course tapes were replaced by CDs and then there was the MiniDisc which quindublicated (technical term) the capacity of a CD. Now we're toting around 120GB of music on an iPod (my 80GB iPod is full, it will be time to get bigger soon) and all of a sudden you're walking to the corner store with enough music to listen to for over a month without hearing the same song twice. Music has gotten very convenient.

I had a talk with a very good friend recently about how neither of us were really listening to music any more. It was a bit like a heroin addict arbitrarily giving up the needle and I wonder if it's because somehow music had lost its preciousness in its convenience.

Which is where the record player comes in.

For the first time in months I'm listening to music again. I mean, there's always been noise on in the background but I'm actually sitting down with headphones on or just properly placed in front of my speakers and doing nothing but listening to an album from end to end. I attribute this to vinyl. The format demands attention. It's a bigger and less convenient effort to make it play. There's the delicate retreiving it from a cardboard envelope, the meticulous brushing of the vinyl's surface to minimize the popping static, the careful placement of the stylus. And it's not so easy to skip songs or change from one record to the next by pushing the "skip record" button like I have on my 5 disc carousel CD player.

But I will admit this too, I feel like I've joined a club I don't necessarily want to be a part of. Vinyl is rarer than CDs and you need to go to shops chock full of hipsters and buy music from somewhat arrogant music afficianados. It's embarassing to see old, used Joy Division records selling for over $10. Fortunately there are still gems of shops and gems of deals to be had. Today I'm listening to Talk Talk's The Party's Over which I bought for 99 cents. It's a really good record that's not been spotted by the hipsters because their blinders are tightly bound. And I managed to score a John Coltrane double LP for a rather expensive but worth it $15 from when he first stepped out from Miles Davis's shadow to record something on his own. Is it ever incredible.

Is it a regression? Probably. And it's inspiring me to reevaluate other aspects of what I do. Photography for instance. I've been picking up old manual cameras for under $100 with an excellent lens and I may start to use these more and more. The conscious decision to pay for and commit to each and every image may prove interesting. It's an idea right now but it's a seed that's growing. I might line myself up for a bit of a hiatus from my daily image in that I might endeavor to put a roll of real, tangible film into a camera and shoot a single picture every day. Of course this would mean I wouldn't get the photos back for a month and it would mean one heck of an update to the blog one day but, like I said, it's an idea that seems to have taken hold. Maybe one day soon I'll begin. In the mean time I'm going record shopping.