Wastin' time, thats what you're doin', wastin time with me uh uh uh oh uh oh,
I like listening to records.
I like listening to music either way, but I particularly like listening to it on vinyl. Having an album on vinyl means a certain dedication to the act of listening. You can't pop it in a player and take it with you while you shop for shoes. You cant pick it up with your greasy sausage fingers and drop it in the tape deck and never think twice about touching the groves. You've got to commit to it. When people call on the phone, you've got to say, "I'm sorry, it's not that I don't care about you, it's just that I just put this record on, see..." and if they're really your friend, they'll pretend to understand, even if they have to cuss you out for being a self absorbed asshat after they hang up the phone. That's alright, it had to be done. You're listening to a record.
Buying an album on vinyl is tricky business, as you are designating that album as something you only listen to at home. That Blondie Tribute Album? Totally danceable, but simultaneously dorky and addictive, for sure a vinyl purchase. Yo La Tengo Danelectro EP? Perfect for cutting up magazines and reading all the letters from every boy I dated in high school in chronological order. Certainly don't want that kind of activity leaving the house. Might as well put that sea and cake double at the ready, fill up the bathtub and get out the burbon. We're going to be here a while.
My records are like out of town lovers for me, because so much of my enjoyment is in the anticipation. I'll sit at work all day singing that poppy little tune to myself, longing for the moment I'll be able to bust through the inner door, drop my satchel in the middle of the room and slide the needle over that Iggy Pop record. Flip the knob to Phono and Oh How Sweet It Is, like a toungue in my mouth at the airport after a month away. Like the first bite of egg and hollandaise sauce when you've been sitting outside Glo's and drinking coffee and reading the Seattle Gay News for the last hour and a half, waiting for those 8 tiny tables to fill and empty several times before it's your turn. This is the ultimate glory of vinyl. 'Soon, I will be eating amazing eggs benedict." = Soon, I will be off this plane and biting behind the ears of my lover." = "Soon, I will be singing along to that Japanese Power Punk Compilation, Side A, Track 4. The song about race cars."
Posted by Sonya at July 10, 2003 09:10 AMIt's days like today when I really did fall in love with sonya at 09:10 AM.
Posted by: UnderwearNinja at July 10, 2003 01:32 PMSensei de Britches - My sentiments exactly..
sonya,
Too... too true. For me, it's that great rolling stones album i wouldn't listen to any other way... CCR with all of the pops and hisses reminiscent of the show i'll never forget.. the fact that Aretha's voice will never be so full and warm as on my LP.. even in this age of digital betterment. Not to mention the fact that my grandmother handed down to me a collection of over 200 classic LP's... antique and brittle as they may be, the sound of a fresh CD cannot hold a candle to an early 60's press of Mozart.
Posted by: sammus at July 10, 2003 02:40 PMwilliam it was really nothing. it will never sound so good without the delicious sounds of a diamond-tipped stylus tracing excitedly through the run-in track; smashing dust and detritus out of the groove noisily as it chases frenetically towards Johnny's first picked note.
todays post earned you a rare-groove vinyl-tribute encoding o'er at me ole www. if you wish now run along and find g*a*m*m*a* (bleek). this was previously 7" only on thick black shellac.
Posted by: fire3500 at July 10, 2003 03:50 PM My friend brought over a record with a song she needed to record and give to the band so she asked me if I had a way of making a CD from an LP. So I hooked up my turntable to my computer and recorded it, moving that music from the analog into the digital realm, from the twentieth into the twenty-first century. It seemed wrong somehow. Like cheating. (Plus the digital version sounded crappy, but I'm still working the bugs out.) Still the digital option "remove noise" did tempt me....
I also confess a certain fetishism for the LP. When I was a teenager acquiring my first music collection, it was mostly done at my local used record store where most records were a buck. Now you can still get used records for a buck at thrift stores and garage sales, but decades have passed so you better check for scratches and warping. I got home my "new" Aretha record and it was so badly damaged that I can't even listen to "Chain of Fools" , which it drives me crazy. Hey, you damn LP! Just 'cause you're forty years old doesn't excuse layin' down on the job like that!
I think it all really comes down to the covers, though. Album covers rule. They are light years cooler than any kind of folded-up origami CD insert bullshit. They stand up on their own, and you can decorate your pad by simply stapling them to the wall.
stapling... *eek*
Posted by: fire3500 at July 11, 2003 12:06 AMRemember when you could actually buy picture frame-like hangers for your LP's, so's you could put them up in your bedroom like works of art -- which is really what they were those album covers.
Yeah, vinyl. Black, white, transluscent water blue, Sgt. Pepper Picture Disk (remember those?), they were (and are, even though I don't have an means of playing them anymore, I've kept a few cherished favorites) so -- tactile. Removing the shrink-wrap, pulling the dust sleeve out of the cover, then finally gingerly sliding the disk out of the sleeve - using either the thumb-and-index-finger-grasping-the-rim or else the tip-it-out-holding-with-thumb-and-balancing-at-center-hole-with-middle-finger method -- so sexy! Not like the current "mash little plastic holder do-hickey until it either releases CD or else breaks a tine" method.
Then there's the whole mechanical ritual; dropping the LP onto the spindle with that little "click" as the catch holds it in place, hovering above the turntable like a shiny black UFO, lifting the tone arm, setting the playback speed, turning that knob or pushing that button to make the whole gizmo start up like a Rube Goldberg invention. Whir. Click. Thwop. Whiz. Dink. Crackle. Music.
So, satisfying.
Posted by: THE COMTE at July 11, 2003 10:06 AMMy oldest LP-go-round is a sony... it's not that it's on it's last leg. It's just that it only ever had one leg in the first place. Sound is still great, and thanks to the DJ stylus I bought when I was testing the mixing/sampling/scratching waters, it plays like new. The only catch is that in order to hear the infamous startup (comte so accurately notes) the table requires a little push start. It's great... the amber glow of the track light. One must also appreciate the fact that you can't silence a record (less it be stopped completely). Even with the old Vestax quelled to it's fullest the song of the needle can still be heard four of five feet away. Like a mini tweeter the needle's sound still true - sans amplification. I remember, back in the day, learning about the science behind the record. I also remember how pissed my mother was when she came home from class to find my sister and I sitting in the middle of the living room floor with a construction paper cone, sewing needle taped to the tip, listening (rather ruining) to all of our favorites. We were soooo cool (or we thought) with our homemade phono.
Posted by: sammus at July 11, 2003 10:30 AM