What are your fondest vinyl memories?
Since you asked, my fondest vinyl memories involve summers when I was still young and a complete fool. My brother ran wires through the attic to the backyard and hooked up speakers so there'd be music outside. One day he was mowing the lawn and I put on Soft Cell, pumping it way loud to the outside world. I would think it is a safe bet that southwestern Bakersfield, California was not quite ready for Sex Dwarf at that decibel level. My mother asked, "Why do you have to play that so loud?" My answer? I shrugged. I did not turn it down.
Lance {grooves-and-platters@glassdog.com} Buying the Beatles "Rubber Soul" before I had a stereo to play it on. I still have that album... There are some things that i -screeeech- that i can't do -screeech- do -- do -- can't do -screeeeeeeeech- with my -screeechhhh- things that i can't do with my cds.
waitgoiter {waitgoiter@ware-house.com} I recently unpacked my 30 year old turntable. Had to find a new drive belt and stylus. Vinyl has a certain romantic, purist appeal. You can only go so far back with CDs. I'm hooked again.
Steve W. {swoolley@msn.com} My first stereo...I was a college freshman and I bought the stereo second hand from a friend who was moving. It was blue, and the speakers hooked on to the turntable, like a suitcase; it even had a handle to carry it. I too remember "Rubber Soul" and "The Fifth Dimension;" "California Dreamin'" was just that in my first, very cold Buffalo winter. Who would have guessed that 14 years later, the dream would be a reality. I still miss the snow...
Lois Powazek {loispow@cyberg8t.com} There was something I liked about owning 45s. It could have been the 'prestige' in my mind. On second thought, that wasn't it. I remember I bought Rick Springfield's Rock of Life. Between owning that single and seeing the video of a burning house, my life was complete. Then again, I'm pretty twisted. I loved borrowing the Vince Giraldi classics and the Kingston Trio records of my dad when I was little. I love the nostalgic value of records. With CDs around today, it's hard for me to think of vinyl as anything but cute. Tee Hee. I'm still playing and enjoying my fondest vinyl memories. Manfred Mann's First album, The Kinks first, The Yardbirds Rave Up, Moby Grape, The Sons of Champlin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, etc... I also play in a band which practices in Mobile Fidelity's vinyl pressing plant. Pretty cool...
craig wiper {craigw@sonic.net} Remember 45's, nothing like mini vinyl,no need to buy albums of one hit wonders.This site is"cool" as it sent me back into my collection as well as my "significant others" collection of full size albums. Talk about artwork.I'll never get rid of them. Even though I have a state of the art sound system the back room still has a stereo with a turntable and always will.
deb {pagliaro@magicnet.net} I remember most fondly the work you sometimes had to do to listen to music. Today, when something goes wrong with your CD player, you need a P.H.D.to fix it yourself. I miss the days when the solution to a warped record or skipping track was to put a penny on the needle and play it anyway.
Jeff {jch1963@msn.com} I think that cd's don't have the ...austerity that vinyl had. They were somehow more important, just by the fact that you had to CARE for them, if you wanted them to stick around. With cd's you wing them across the room to your friend to "throw" them into the cdplayer. No respect, no sense of importance, it's careless... fetish is a good word for it I think, it's almost kinda scary. I have very few of my originals, only Buffalo Springfield Again, and a few others, all keepers.
bOB My first "vinyl memory" was listening to "Wimoweh" on my mom's HUGE record player--it was the size of and weighed as much as a large suitcase with bowling balls inside. For no apparent reason, mom had put the record player in the kitchen, where the microwave is now, next to the fridge. It was pre-Watergate, small-town America and mom had a copy of every Kingston Trio album made. My brother and I would dance around the kitchen on a summer day, with nothing more to do than listen to "Wimoweh" over and over until even we were sick of it. That record player had a knob that went all the way up to 78 rpm's!! I recall we would put on records and laugh because it sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks. My next vinyl experience does not occur until 1981 or 1982: my brother and I got a stereo with turntable AND cassette for Christmas. Within days I had purchased "Rio" "Is There Something I Should Know," and "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran (hey, times were different and I was young!) Bought my first CD player only in the last year, holding out far longer than anyone else I know. Still play my scratchy 45's and those great used LP's (Police's "Synchronicity" on purple vinyl!) I buy when I can find 'em. And two scratchy, barely audible, Kingston Trio albums.
Patrick {thomp@pop.uky.edu} Well, 2 memories really. One REALLY old and one more recent. The first is a memory of sitting by one of those record players built for kids (I was one at the time) listening to the voice of my friend's grandmother who narrated children's stories professionally in Mexico. It was the story of Swan Lake, and to this day it remains one of the saddest most beautiful experiences of my life. The other memory is of owning Split Enz "True Colours". THIS album was special because it had a limited edition laser etching that reproduced the patterns from the cover on the vynil itself with a REALLY cool holographic effect. Sometimes I would put this album on just to watch it spin!
Luis V. Aguila {aguila@interlog.com} I worked i the music business for many years. When Bruce Springsteen hit with Born to Run, the record company thought him big enough to maste his own album. Bruce always complained that the mastered record never sounded as good as the studio tapes no matter how hard he tried. I remember going to a convention with a record company exec from CBS, telling him about Bruce's complaints while looking at Sony's first CD player. He used my story to rush Sony's debut up almost a whole two years sooner. Now, after reading your story, I feel not only a little sad, but almost partly responsible. NAH, I was a peon, they probably weren't listening.
Steve D'Ambrosia {coneheads@aol.com} Unfortunatly I found music just as vinyl was leaving the mainsteam. When everyone was rereleasing thier old albums on cd and everone else either had a cd-man in the Christmas stocking or a cd-player under the tree. But there is one thing I do know about vinyl, and that is vinyl will never completly go away. And there is a very good reason for that. On a good turntable, that big black disc sounds 100 times better than the same album on cd on a top of the line stereo. Why is this wonder true you may ask. And the staight and simple answer is that the music on the vinyl has not been cut. In order to get the music on the cd they must first digitize it. This highly unnatural process breaks the music into tiny pieces, forever destroying the continuity of the analog sound. Thus it is forever the goal of the compact disc to emulate the perfection of this imperfect medium by constantly striving for better and better resolution and definition. But you know, I don't think they are ever going to realize thier goal, they will always fall short.
cookie {wc2130@cnsvax.albany.edu} My earliest memory of music is sitting in the dining room of my old house in front of the sliding glass door. I was three years old, and I had a death grip on "Cheap Thrills" by Big Brother and the Holding Company. I thought it was cool because of the "cartoons" all over it, and I loves to play "Mercedes Benz" over and over. I am suprised I lived past 5, to tell the truth. When I moved out, I took that album with me. The Crumb art work is fantastic, and I still sing "Mercedes Benz" as loudly and off-key as ever. I never replaced it with a CD, and probably never will.
Amanda Hay {alhay01@morehead-st.edu} I have two fond vinyl memories... Afternoons spent as a child rummaging through the L.P.'s and 45's left beind by much older (by 16 years) sister. The Pretenders, Fats Domino, The Archies, Eartha Kitt (I still LOVE Eartha Kitt!!) Even Perry Como! I still have an original pressing of Elvis' first album -- you know the one -- the front cover shows an incredibly young Elvis in black and white with ELVIS in hot pink down the left side and PRESLEY in neon green across the bottom. Yeah, THAT one. Then, of course, there's the copy of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" on the original Apple Records label... I think I learned more about my sister from the music she left behind than I ever learned from her own lips. Second memory: My first love would occasionally leave a single red rose on my doorstep at night. One such rose was accompanied by a 45 of "Woman", by John Lennon.
Kristine i was three and my favorite movies were 'grease' and 'annie'. these soundtracks i would play over and over... alas, i came into my musical age, as the record player went into extinction. i have recently searched for one that i wouldn't have to plug into a stereo. eureka! for ten dollars i found one that is a self sustaining piece of furniture within itself! ah, i'm hopelessly devoted...
rebecca {bwhite@moonvalley.com} True, the CD has better more rounded sound, and holds up much better over time; but I have saved every album I have ever collected, from Junior High on, no matter what condition. I even have several stacks of 45's, some, like Elvis and The Doors, inherited form my older brother. It's not just nostalgia, it is also the Art of the Album Cover. It is definitely an Art that does not translate the same when viewed in those little folded packets stuffed into the CD jewel case. For example: The original cover for the Rolling Stones 'Sticky Fingers' album, done by Andy Warhol, and had a real workable zipper; on the CD insert all you see is a drastically reduced photo that does not have the impact, nor the humor of the original package. Or the Black Sabbath covers, part of the fun of bringing those home was to shock your parents into premature gray with the imagery presented. You could hang an album cover on the wall and call it a work of Art; who can really see all the nuances of a piece of art on a tiny CD? Think of the impact the inner sleeve of the Marilyn Manson EP 'LunchBox' would have if blown up to album cover size? AHHHHH, the fantasy of it..............
JT Caterwaul {jtc@primenet.com} i still buy most stuff on vinyl. it only comes on vinyl. welcome to the world of independent music. 7" are all most bands can afford to put out. corporate sucks - so vinyl thrives on the underground music scene.
simon king {simon@phreakco.com} I'm afraid you don't really understand the whole vinyl thing. Your article was droll. The thing about vinyl is that it A. Does sound better B. is better because it is more sexual than CD. You know the whole needle in the groove thing.
J.V. Lentini {jim@butterfly.net} I never played my 45's. I never could find and adapter(the little plastic thing). First, I was an Elton John freak. I was in the third, fourth grade. I had about five Elton albums at the time, but...Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy! It was the coolest. It was a double album with cover art that just changed everything (it had a lot of strange naked creatures all around). Next, Destroyer. Kiss took over completely. I had about all of them for a while. Dressed to Kill, Rock and Rollover, Alive, Alive II, the one with love gun. My stepfather had the best stereo, it was QUADROPHONIC! He used to completely rock out to Neil Young. After the Goldrush, Harvest, Comes a Time... . Now I don't have any albums. My mom had a garage sale. I'm going to go buy some neil Young cd's.
D. {Adamonwas1@aol.com} About two dozen years ago I met Peter Goldmark. He had just retired and was trying to start a new research company... He told me how he had hated the interruptions when the 78 rpm record changer would drop another disk on the turntable during a symphony... so he /invented/ the LP. I think of him every time I haul my seven cantalope crates full of vinyl to a new apartment, or squint at the tiny type on a CD folder. Lps, albums, records... I have always loved them. I still have over 2000 of all kind of mainstream and otherwise rock and jazz. 10 or was it 15 years ago my idea of a great time was to spend hours looking through the cut-out bins of every record store and department store (k-mart and zayre were favorites) within driving distance of home, searching for that one record at a $1.99 or maybe $.99 that would really do it for me. I was always after that one that nobody else had or had even heard of that was really great. It did'nt happen often but then when it did, it brought joy ... it was a good thing! CD's are ok, they sound good and they dont get scratched or nasty with finger prints, but the cut-outs are no fun at all.
Dan S. {sirdan@erols.com} Boy! Talk about being enlightened...my husband (ya gotta love'm) didn't think "this CD phase" would pan out ("It'll never fly, Jen"). As a consequence we, umm, don't own a CD player...our son does...we have three computers(486, pentium and a pentium notebook) but no CD player. We STILL use our turntable (tho' use our cassette deck more as we've taped all out LPs) and got really ticked when we couldn't buy the latest on vinyl...ah well. So do you, like, think this CD thing is here to stay????
Jennifer Worden {jworden@meadoworks.ns.ca} Still have vinyl. And cassettes. CDs too. Some of the records I once owned were lost in a divorce settlement--to an ex-wife who doesn't appreciate them any more than she appreciates my old custom '66 Chevy short "surfer" van, which had an 8track in it for the first ten years I owned it, before cassettes became readily available. To me, vinyl LPs are entwined with Saturday night on acid back before the Haight was a tourist attraction and a dozen people crashed in a single apartment.
Robin Miller {roblimo@primenet.com} i swear i didn't plan this, but my CD player died last week. *waah* so i fished my old turntable out of the box in the closet, hooked it up, and spent the weekend wrapped in vinyl. i haven't bought albums in years, so everything was old (some of it embarrassingly so), but it brought back such sweet memories: sneaking into my older brother's room and listening to his Todd Rundgren and AWB and Steely Dan LPs, and then buying my first albums (KISS "Double Live Platinum" and the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack -- told you they were bad!), and years later rolling joints on "Ummagumma" and "Tales from Topographic Oceans", and still later finding imports of noisy European industrial bands that'd never get around to playing my town -- and suddenly, puttering around my flat on a grey sunday in 1996, listening to that particular brand of 70s jazz fusion (Jean Luc Ponty, Jeff Beck), i felt a rush of connectedness to my past.
Lance, i listended to Kate Bush's "The Dreaming" just for you :-)
drue {drue@vivid.com} lying down on the floor in front of my folks 'both speakers in the one cabinet' record player, to get the stereo image. expectation building during the day, waiting for dark to go get my fix of 'dark side of the moon' or 'tubular bells' lying on the floor again. ordering the next beatles album before the release date then waiting for the phone call from the record store. poring over the album art again and again. now I've started buying boxed set cd's trying to recapture that album art high. CD's have a lot going for them but ... they aint vinyl, and it's just not the same. Buying a Soft Cell 12" that I never heard of for $3.00 at the now defunct Record Trading Center in Orange, Ca. in 1984 and seeing it on the wall of a Melrose record shop (the one that sold/sells all the bootleg casettes) for $100.00 because the B Side was "It's A Mug's Game" which became very big on KROQ.
Thomas Cray {Groovjuice@aol.com} My fondest vinyl memories are still Badfinger's Baby Blue on the Apple label.....and Herman's Hermits....I'm Henry the 8th I am .....Geez...am I showing my age or what ???!!!..These, of course, were 45's ,or better yet 78 1/2..whatever..I used to have tons o those little plastic yellow thingeys that fit in the middle of the 45's...but now I can't find nary a ONE ... The only true really SAD thing about CD or digital technology, though, with OLDER recordings..(or ANALOG) recordings is that they just don't sound the same recorded or re-mastered digitally...the instrumental 'separation' or depth of sound is just not there...oh well..they sure are more durable though...oh...and one last buggaboo....doesn't it bother you when you spend $15 or $18 bucks on a CD and there is absolutely NO info OR lyrics OR bio or anything ??!! ok bye
Joan Marshall {mediamus@interlog.com} I liked and album by the Tubes called "Remote Control". It was so sarcastic and funny, yet well produced by Todd Rundgren, I think. On the front of the cover, there was this baby in a carrier with a televeision mounted on top in the shape of a breast and the baby was watching it intently. What a statement. On the back was the set of the Hollywood Squares with each of the memeber occupying a square with the expection of one square in the lower right hand corner that was labeled, The Tubes. Inside the album was a small picture, the size of a 45 record with them all jameed into the square. It was so funny.. I had that and listend to it all through my favorite summer ever. I had a lot of firsts that summer. I got high, laid, sick from drinking too much, bought a muscle car(65 GTO), discovered my love for the guitar and joined my first band. Fremont, especially Niles was the place to be that summer. I was there, on Old Canyon Rd, listening to the Tubes...
Bob La Force {laforceb@mail01.adm.duke.edu} Buying the Beatle white album (a double album) and listing to it and a friends apartment.
Joel Schilling {jjjss@mail.idt.net} hey- what's the point of listening to Robert Johnson or Leadbelly on CD? Digital pops and hisses? There is music that will neverbe on CD. ALot of wacky stuff that I have on album, that every once in awhile I'll see on some CD compilation of weird music or something. hmmmmm. maybe I should look into that.
paul {fman@enteract.com} I spend hundreds of dollars a month on vinyl, sometimes it might be a little more. How much do I spend on CD's? Nada! Well, maybe if there's a release for $5 or something. I can't buy 99% of the music I listen to on CD, so it has to be vinyl. But there's more to it than analogue versus digital. One artist I know is so anti-CD, so much so, that when he did trax for a CD, he recorded his music and then on the mixdown, had on one track a silent record (yes, it is possible, they still have grooves, and are not entirely silent) so that he would have crackles and pops on the CD. How did it sound? I don't know, I haven't bought it! SAVE THE VINYL!
royaL {bglazier@camtech.net.au} about two years ago i moved to a city where i knew no one. in the forseeable weekend nights spent home alone i decided to persue a dream i've had for a long time. i bought two turntables and traded some older equipment for a nice mixer. sometimes now i wonder if my kids will think i was a dork in my youth for spending endless hours in record stores searching for the perfect beat, or that happy, wordless melody that makes ya smile and ya just can't help it. oh, about a month after moving in my CD player broke, and it hasn't been fixed since. i had lots of vinyl before, now i'm a purist. My copy of Blackboard Jungle Dub by Lee Perry holds magical powers. Even though it is scratched and bent and mispressed and off-centre, these serve to make the power stronger. From the second the drums begin, it sounds as if the earth is being torn apart. It is a thing of unique beauty; wabi-sabi. Something which no CD could compare to.
ashley kennerley {dt93atk@brunel.ac.uk} This week, I fulfilled a lifelong fantasy - putting an LP on my turntable and hearing an entire album of my own music come out of the speakers. It's not available on CD.
peter hawkinson {phawk@organic.com} Bringing the speakers out on the veranda during a thunder storm and playing Alan Parsons Project, Edgar Alan Poe at 120db. At times the music shook more than the natural thunder. Although you always strived for perfection you could never quite attain it. It's not fun any more, perfection comes in a thin jewel case and some how the music (classical to R&B and everything in between) seems to have lost it's soul. 1. those yellow snap in 45 spindles. 2. the fucia leopardskin inner sleeve of B-52's Wild Planet. 3. learning to scratch on an MK1200's.
george vlahogiannis {gxv2@columbia.edu} Best: Too many to list. Worst: Going to a "Carribean Party" with a bag of Calypso LP's. As I was taking them out the 14-yr-old son-of-the-host looks on quizically and asks "Are those . . .are those . . . records?" As I sadly put them away I had to reply: "No kid, they're stone tablets."
Mitchel Ahern {mitchela@eaw.com} My next door neighbor Candace and I used to play the Cars "Candy-O" and "Get the Knack" when I was in seventh grade to distraction. We'd sit on my front porch, turn it all the way up and watch the boys from Northwest have soccer practice right across the street. These were high school boys, so we figured the full volume declaration of our musical taste would irresistably draw them to us, although in retrospect, I'm sure the attention we got was largely based on our tube tops. Still, to hear those songs with the hisses and pops of vynil intact is to get in touch with some deep primal stirrings of mine. To feel that brink of sexual tension, like a pavlovoan dog, it feels a little like waiting too long to pee, right when you're trying to decide if you still need to go or not. I'm no luddite, but I am one of those freaks who thinks that vinyl sounds better than CDs. Where analog distorts at the ends of the sonic spectrum (rumble & hiss), digital punches holes in the middle and leaves a harsher, shallower rendering of the original sonic mush. Those pesky analog to digital converters may have pretty good resolution, but they can never fill in the gaps like warm, sticky vinyl. Even today, when given the choice between purchasing a new CD or LP, the LP always wins, and considering LPs are STILL cheaper than CDs I don't anticipate changing my buying patterns any time soon. So, my vinyl memories keep coming - the undeniable mass of a 180 gram pressing Beck's Odelay; the concussive sucker punch of Shellac's Action Park; the deep, transparent bass on any June of '44 record. As long as there are vinyl versions of new releases, I'm going to keep buying. And as long as I keep open beer away from the collection, those sonic pleasures stored on my LPs should last long after my CDs have oxidized into oblivion.
Brian Goad {bgoad@worldnet.att.net} I first heard Thomas Dolby's "This Flat Earth" album in 1986 while stationed in the Army in Germany. Of course, it was on vinyl. I remember listening to "Screen Kiss", "I Scare Myself" et. al. while looking out over the German vineyards near my town. Somehow the album got lost over time... Five or six years later, while on a road trip to New Orleans, I happened to find this same album (out of print, never put out on CD). I had looked for it for years -- and finally found it! Unfortunately, I set it down somewhere and it was lifted. Two years later, I started dating a girl with a decent vinyl collection. She just happened to have that album, and promptly gave it to me! Maybe because of that, we lived together for a year and a half :) Also, thanks to Recycled Records on Haight Street, I recently found a vinyl copy of Talk Talk's "The Colour of Spring", which I had been looking for for TEN years. Thanks Recycled!
jay bain {cyberzen@cyberzen.com} Yes, the artwork on large vinyl sleeves can't be beat, especially gatefolds. The entire packaging. I haven't listened to Wings Over America in over 15 years, but the packaging alone is stunning. It is a triple album with gatefold sleeve, and it's a thick sucker. Biggest album in my collection that isn't a box set. Comes with a poster (lots of the Beatles, group and solo releases, had posters, and even cut-outs or stickers.) Each side of the three record sleeve inserts shows an image of light shining through an opening aircraft door, getting wider on each of the 6 sides. Each record's label is an aircraft instrument or radar type display, 6 different ones. I'd like to challenge someone to roll a joint on the CD release of Dark Side of the Moon. Oh, and there's something about how the pops, hisses and scratches become a PART of an album after hearing it dozens or hundreds times. I don't mind CDs, but I HATE cassettes. I love vinyl. I can spend hours flipping through LPs in a used record store, but when I shop for a CD I usually know what I'm looking for, find it and leave. I have never owned an 8-track, but there're bigger than cassettes, so they must be at least a little better. They seem to have more character, and that counts for something. Vinyl LPs have their own smell. The really old ones are the best. Kind of musty and friendly. 7-inch singles from the UK (and other countries?) had small holes, so you didn't have to find one of those little yellow plastic thingies to play them. I have The Beatles White Album on white vinyl, and my Rauchenberg Speaking in Tongues has turned yellow too. "If you balk at buying by brand alone, another surefire way of gauging the worth of an album is to take a gander at the grooves themselves. Notice the light and dark patterns. If there are more light patterns than dark ones, it means that the grooves are wider, which means in turn that the record is heavier because there is more music crammed into each groove."
The passion of vinyl. Lester died in 1982, before the "death" of vinyl. I have The Residents Commercial Album which is 40 songs of exactly 1 minute each, 20 per side. The best looking grooves on any album I own. One last thing; runoff grooves. More specifically, the sometimes cryptic messages scratched into the empty spaces near the middle of an LP, put there by the hand of a band member or engineer. "Another load of spunk for the vinyl junkies" - The Sex Pistols, The Mini Album
Erik {iversen@prologiccorp.com} listening to my grandparents' Bill Cosby records ("Noah!" "Who is that?" "It's the Lord, Noah" "....Right!") listening to my parents' Simon & Garfunkel albums ("hello lamppost, whatcha knowin'?") listening to Keith Jarret's Koln Concert double LP i bought for 4 bucks at Moby Disc on Papa's old Dual turntable, speakers cranked as loud as my neighbors could stand Going to the African Record Center in Brooklyn, NY back in 1981. It was just after a snowstorm. I got lost on Church St. and wandered around in the cold looking for this place which I believed to be the Holy Grail for African music in America. I was a programmer for a non-commercial radio station in central California and was playing African music exclusively. I needed more. I was looking for a prominent storefront but instead what I found was a small sign covered with snow hanging from a doorway. I entered and almost immediately walked out thinking it couldn't be the right place. A tall African man, traditionally dressed, came out from behind a curtian at the end of what seemed a narrow hallway (which was the store itself). He had very broken english, but we managed to communicate once I pointed to one of the many record covers hung everywhere but the floor and celing. He would nod, dissapear behind the curtian for a moment and return with the vinyl. He then placed the record on '50's player, the kind that stacked records, had an auto-drop and a 45 rpm mount. I hadn't seen one since the 60's. He turned everything up all the way...trebble, bass, and volume (which I discovered was another tradition from Africa) dropped the needle and proceeded to get very excited about the music. He turned me on to lot's of West African Highlife music I would have never been exposed to. I bought as much as I could carry (vinyl tends to get heavy, try lifting a box full). I returned to CA and proceeded to air my limited knowledge of African discography to the California coast. It wa a hit and I continued with the show until 1990. In 1985, King Sunny Ade of Nigeria made his first American tour. A few years later Paul Simon would help make South African "Township Jive" palatable to the public. I'm proud to be among those who helped bring this wonderful music forward. The show is still being aired on KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz, California with it's original name "The Vinyl Jungle".
Rafael It seems almost more like there can't be a memory without vinyl -- everything's been linked to it at one point or another in 37 years. Some happy rambles brought on by everyone's thoughts: * The absolute rush of buying an unknown album on a hunch and totally loving it... * Studying the cardboard's pictures as a child, trying to decipher keys to the world (reading the CD foldouts just doesn't compare)... * A short story (apparently): Bringing home Neil Young's Harvest, moving my whole system to the back porch -- with my Mom watching with increasing befuddlement at the production. Finally getting the LP playing... when Mom heard Neil start to sing, she laughed and laughed (not a fan, evidently) ... but the album remains with grooves that are almost gone. * Playing guitar along with albums to figure the songs out... * Songs that don't sound right without pops at certain places... * Songs inextricably linked to a certain person or place... and... *** Least favorite memory: Moving 800 albums (each time; evidently my fate in life).
Steve Taylor {steve@mathtechinc.com} I had just bought a spanking new 45 by the Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs (close enough) and I left it in the car on the dashboard. What more can be said, I saw a shriveled black glob when I started to leave for the beach the next morning. Later I installed a 8-track player (yep that's right) and solved the 45 dilemma.
Gary Anderson {garya@ismi.net} the same year I bought my 1200s I gave my parents a shiny new stereo with a CD player - what the hell was I thinking? they have a huge collection of 60s/70s rock... all vinyl, all completely useless on their new music machine (it doesn't have a plug for a turntable). I think they own about 20 CDs which people have given them as presents - classical music, that kind of thing, but they'd rather use their big old sound system which takes up a whole corner of their living room. I grew up listening to all kinds of jazz/folk/rock like Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, the Stones, Doors, Sly and the Family... whatever. My first record player had a lid with a little speaker inside, bought at some market for a few weeks pocket money (which wasn't much). It was mostly made of plastic & the first records I played on it had space age sounds then electro. In the early 80s I tried to scratch up some tunes on it & broke the cartridge (I also tried this on my parents big system & added more fizz to the needle). I've owned loads of turntables - mum & dad just get theirs serviced every now & then - & now I play on decks probably worth twice what their new little CD system is. I'm going to trade their CD machine in for a proper system - build it from components so the sound is good, add some decent speakers... it's ironic that most of the music I play is digital or at least electronic & my parents' music is old rock. Why would they want a CD player? Actually I don't have much use for a CD player either - even the dual players for mixing (hardly the tactile mixing I'm used to - more like programming your VCR). Is it a fetish? Who cares - put the needle on the record & groove
namlook {stuart@ia.com.au} Four years old: Asking Mom to "play the white apple side". Abbey Road, my first foray into rock. Nine: The Johnny Cash 45 at 16 RPM on Mom's KLH stereo. My step-sisters and I still reminisce about "listening to the cows". Thirteen: The Brothers Johnson, "Blam". Oy. Eighteen: All the Led Zeppelin Albums. Smoking lots of pot, and arguing which one was the best. Twenty-five: Playing indie 45s for a friend on a drunken Sunday afternoon. I put a CD on the turntable. Not too effective... bottoming out listening to Cat Stevens spinning round and round on my old radio turntable, tears in my eyes regretting things that might have worked out in a different way in a different life. And sundays, getting up late to sit in the living room with Ella Fitzgerald's "Sweet Songs for Swingers" and a cigarette.
Eric Schmidt {orange@hellyeah.com} I remember discovering The Firesign Theatre when I was only 8 or 9 at my grandma's house. My grandma was pretty hip for a grandma and I remember all her old Beatles records as well as wild African rhythmic music from the time she spent living in Morocco. I remember the day my step-dad and I both came home with copies of Duran Duran's 'Seven and the Ragged Tiger.' I also remember my step-dad's copies of the Boomtown Rats' 'The Fine Art of Surfacing' and Jim Carroll Band's 'Catholic Boy' and the Bob Marley album that was shaped like a giant lighter and the Rolling Stones album with the zipper. I remember the last LP I bought full price, 'Paul's Boutique' by the Besatie Boys, because it had a quad gatefold cover. I remember being at my parents' house last 4th of July and flipping through my vinyl to DJ the impromptu party I had, playing Pat Benatar and Men Without Hats and Big Pig and Guadalcanal Diary. I want my vinyl back.
Christian Ruzich {ruz@minds.com} Owning & loving my copy of "E.V.A." by Jean-Jacques Perrey and finding out it was worth lots more than I paid for it (which was nothing $=0), and people really wanted it years later. And hearing it sampled still on loads of cool records.
stephen When we were very young, my parents bought my brothers and sisters and I all the soundtracks to the Disney movies as they came out. We listened to them over and over, as children do, in those days before video cassettes. We memorized the dialogue. As time went on, the records wore out, and so we memorized the dialogue with repetitions and deletions caused by the scratches. And to this day it is a bond we share, watching videos of our old friends who we used to know only by sound. We pause the tape sometimes, and talk about how perfectly strange it sounds.
kat {katnmike@world.std.com} santanas abraxsis, doctor johns gris gris, talking heads remain in light, john coltrane my favorite things...kindred spirits...what memories!! there is something just right about vinyl..the warmth, the size, the art...the resonance!! I remember John Lennon getting shot (I was very young) and my mother sitting in the living room, crying and listening to her beatles records. Then years later- I remember digging that same record player out of the garage to play one of those square records you can get as magazine inserts - it had some unreleased Primus tuyne (a residents cover, actually)- and then once it was out I discovered all of this old, wonderful vinyl- this experience helped usher me into the world of independent music (I don't think Slint will ALLOW people to listen to them if it's not on vinyl...) I still love CDs, and cassettes, but vinyl's got character. Dammit.
tony ceci {shankely@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu} From the beginning, there was music. At age 2, I scaled a shelving unit to get to my parents' stereo, even though all they ever listened to was John Denver and Andy Williams. And then, at age 8...it hit me for the first time, and I fell hard. The Who's _Tommy_, the original 1969. My first album, and it left me a changed man. The cryptic triple-gatefold cover, the then-mysterious tag "Recorded In England", the ever elusive storyline, the timeless songs. 1100 CD's (but also 370-and-still-growing LPs) later, I still cherish my now beat-up copy of that rock opera that bears my name... Pete, if you're out there reading this, thanks again.
Thomas {stalex@outer.com} After reading everyone else's vinyl memories, I couldn't help feeling a little left out. Born in 1979, I grew up buying cassettes (those evil monsters of the car stero!) and, eventually, cds. It wasn't until I was halfway through high school that I discovered the wonders of those beautiful, grooved disks. While browsing through my favorite record store I deided to check out what was so interesting in the back of the room. Bin after bin of used and new vinyl was just waiting for me to show some interest. Instead of buying two cds at almost sixteen dollars each (quite a big expence for those making minimum wage!), I went home with three new albums, and one used Mighty Mighty Bosstones album. My parents laughed at me when I arrived home with my purchases, but I didn't care. I brushed the dust off of the old turntable in the basement and became mezmerized. They were nothing like the sterile sound of compact disks played in black plastic boxes, this was as close to the music as you could get without siting in the recording studio. It's a good thing I love independent music. It seems like vinyl is yet another thing mainstream music lost out on. I guess people never realize that not everything needs updating.
kelly watts {khwatts@acsu.buffalo.edu} Wow. What a great recollection. I couldn't agree more, and, not only do I own the "Our Daughter's Wedding" record, but I saw them live. The day I felt oldest was when I was 33 1/3. Not 30. Not 35. Why? Because it was a day I had planned for. From the time I was about 18 I always said that I would have a huge party for my 33 1/3 birthday. It would be a "come as your favorite album party." But back then 33 1/3 seemed impossibly far away. Time flew by and when I was 32 I realized that the big day was approaching. I tried to ignore it. Then, just a couple of weeks before 33 1/3 I realized it was too late for the huge party I had envisioned. Work was hectic, life was confusing, and I think I really wanted to just skip the whole getting older thing. On the big day I was in a convenience store. There was a young woman behind the counter. I mentioned that it was my 33 1/3 birthday. She looked at me funny and asked if I "celebrate all my fractional birthdays?" I said "no, just 33 1/3." She asked why. I said "because that's the speed the LPs rotate." She said "those are the big ones, right?" That's when I felt really old.
Andrew {mr_andrew@msn.com} Oh, the glory of finding Marlene Dietrich records, unwanted, FREE Marlene Dietrich records with only a few songs scratched beyond recognition... Either that or discovering that the much coveted b-sides to the Sisters of Mercy's Floodland era singles were ghastly attempts at jazzy mood music on Andrew Eldritch's part... Or maybe it's just the back room at PDQ records in Tucson, reached by walking down a rather battered stretch of grey carpet that leads through a roofed-in yard between two warehouses and ends up in a massive space bursting with everything from Wagner to Chinese opera...
s clarke {sclarke@planeteer.com} There are so... many. Here's one: Finding original pressings of Zappa's first two records (Freak Out and Absolutely Free) in a used book store for only two bucks each. This was before CD's and the records had been out of print for years. Here's another: Listening to Hendrix's Electric Ladyland for the first time (Japanese pressing) and being completely and utterly blown away.
Cai Campbell {vex@greatgig.com} My first realization that music was mine as long as I had control of my grandmother's 45 collection. That was pretty cool--The Dorsey's, Eddie Fisher, Hawiian music on green and blue vinyl. I also had little yellow and red disks of my very own with Christmas songs sung by Gene Autry and the Stars and Stripes Forever available to be played over and over and over... Then there were the late 60's...Elton John, Otis Redding, The Doors...I could go ON! With one exception--that Rolling Stone album I sold for a buck (Stickey Fingers), I still got 'em all. Don't have room for much, but still have all my albums. Last great recollection: A dream I had just a few months ago in my 47th year, that I discovered that certain kinds of lasers could revitalize vinyl and smooth the pits and furrows like a dermatologist for plastique. I always have great ideas for saving the world and making the big bucks, but none were so great as my dream that would make all those dusty old records in my house, your house and the local Goodwill store, new again! If you're a laser tekkie, run with it.
Zette {ZZZdeco@AOL.com} i was born in late 1982. all i have ever bought is cds. i have never bought a record - until today. i was in a local dance music store - and it seemed that all the cool stuff was on vinyl. they had turntables there, and it looked cool. so i bought 3 albums by artists i have never heard of. all great stuff. its not on cd. im buying a turntable tommorow. i dont think there has been one in the house in my lifetime. eventually i want to get a set of technics mkiis. but that will have to wait ... over the years i have built my vinyl collection to about 200 lps - not much by other's collections i have seen. some of the more rare ones (hendrix's Cosmic Turnaround, the feelies' Crazy Rhythms, R.E.M.'s Down South) i leave at my boyhood home in Northern VA. others i cannot live without hearing so i brought them here to Athens, GA. last christmas, appearently 2 days after i went home for the holiday's, some idiot who lived above me turned off his heat and left for a week. a pipe burst and filled my bottom floor apartment with 2 inches of standing water. being largely furitureless, the 50 or so albums i had stacked horizontally on the floor got soaked. while my roomate had the sense to salvage my speakers and stereo, the albums got left in a flat stack to mildew and disintegrate for 2 weeks. i came back to the horror of seeing my precious memories still wet and stuck together in a rank smelling mass of vinyl and paper. while the mold growing on the vinyl itself was fairly easy to remove, every single jacket was heavily water damaged. original pressings of sgt. pepper's, workingman's dead, and ravi shankar at monterey were now zero value. not like i would ever sell them, just seeing beautiful cover art that looks like i took a bath with it left a loss in my heart. and my eyes. i am reminded that everthing i gather is just more i can lose.
andy stitt {astitt@earthlink.net} 1) My brother came home with Van Halen 1 and the Ramones first album on the same day. My friends and I sat in the living room and listened to them both.... choosing the Ramones was the beginning of a long and interesting path. 2) I used to lie on my parents floor (pre-Ramones), and place one speaker on either side of my head, six inches from my ears. Then I'd close my eyes and play their records... the stereo effect was great. 3) Listening to Simon and Garfunkel and the Beatles at about age 4 while my father cooked dinner. I memeorized each of those albums through repeated listenings. 4) Reading album covers while listening to records... holding a cardboard 12" jacket in your hands in much better than trying to deal with a tiny little slip of paper and looking through the plastic at the graphics of a CD. There is an odd bunch of ideas that go along with CDs: The most significant one, of course, is that they will last longer than vinyl. This is, simply, untrue. One scratch on a CD and it's toast, plus their expected lifespan has shrunk considerably since their introduction (now down to 12 yrs or so, I understand). My parents bought Beatles vinyl in 1967 that is still pristine and sounds great... it was made very well then, and shows no signs of deterioration. The second that comes to mind is that a product that holds more music is somehow desirable. I, ofr one, used to be quite fond of playing a particular side of one record and then moving on to another LP. With vinyl, sides were actually planned out, and songs put together in a ceratin order for a reason. The second side of many LPs is quite different from the first... now people put CDs on shuffle play, as though listening to an unrelated group of songs.... the album no longer exists... it's just a dozen songs now. Of course, there is also the argument that CDs sound better, but I don't get that one either. For the most, they sound pretty much like the vinyl, particularly if they are simply reissues of old vinyl (duh). I have always been suspicious of the orderliness of digital recording... of putting sounds into little boxes so that they sound the same every time. If you don't believe me, ask all of the bands that are now seeking out studios with tubes rather than transistors in their boards (for "warm" sound), and all of the guitar players that are trading in their solid state amps for old tube models. (I bought a tube amp early in the digital revolution for $75, that now goes for around $700)... anyway, I buy CDs, but they aren't anything special, and the pictures are tiny tiny tiny. Billy and the Boingers Bootleg, "You Stink But I Love You" on square, floppy vinyl stuck between the pages of a Bloom County book.
Dale Sorenson {dalesoren@aol.com} I was 4 or maybe 5. My mother would buy me a Golden Book or Golden Books record every week at the supermarket. The records were red, yellow, blue, green vinyl; chilren's songs and nursery rhymes set to music. We'd go home and I'd play them on a pale pink and grey Columbia portable record player that had 4 speeds, 16, 33 1/3, 45 and 78rpm. Sometimes my mom would let me play her lps, Sheherazade, The story of Moses narrated by Joseph Cotton (that voice!), Victory At Sea. Best vinyl moment; the first time I saw my name listed as the engineer on the credits on the back of an album. It was where I'd always wanted to be. It still is.
Caryl {weyrduo@interport.net} My fondest vinyl memory... when my father gave me every Beatles LP that he owned, along with a record player for my 16th birthday...
Manda Peters {conner@sanasys.com} I am on the front edge of the generation that unfortunately isn't well aquainted with vinyl records. I wish I could say that I owned more actual music albums in vinyl (other than Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in the Park), but I am very happy to say that I was well aquainted with them as a result of my older sister. My parents and grandparents bought many Sesame Street and other children's records for my sister in the late 70's (I didn't come along until 1979). It was through these records that I had adventures with Scooby Doo, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Wonder Woman (my favorite). I also had numerous 45s with trimmed versions of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark, ET, and many fairy tales. I never have been much of a TV watcher. Since I spent hours looking at the books while listening to those stories, I was able to practically teach myself to read by the time I was in preschool. I still have most of the records, though some were sacrificed as a result of childhood carelessness. I still enjoy digging out the old record player (which was amazingly never harmed) and playing the old stories when I clean out my closet. I know I look silly, a freshman in college, sitting on the floor enjoying the story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves for the nine billionth time. I still know exactly where I need to watch out for the skips. I intend to keep those records for my children, with the hopes that they will give the same enjoyment that I will always cherish. As a DJ, I collect vinyl like you collect CD's. My collection grows by dozens every week. Some live long and prosperous lives in my record box. Others last one play on a Friday night. I treat them rough. I never hold them by the edges. I always touch the vinyl and move it back and forth under my fingers. I remember what a huge pain in the ass it was moving a friend of mines HUGE record collection from place to place everytime he moved! He had these wooden crates(remember when everyone had wooden crates)full off two tons of plastic records....and who was the lucky helper to move them? Than would be me...
MIKE {think4them@aol.com} Sneaking the headphones out from under my bed, putting on The Who's "Tommy" and listening to the entire album, end to end, in bed in the dark, late on a school night. I would create fantastic scenes in my head to accompany the lyrics. My mother would occasionally bust me and tell me to get my 14-year-old-butt straight to bed... Later, falling in love to Elvis Costello's "My Aim Is True"...played that one until the grooves wore clean through. Thanks for reminding me to dig out my long-hidden and dust-covered vinyl friends, and give them the proper respect and admiration they deserve.
beth {carterb@earthlink.net} although i'm not sure what the first lp i ever owned was, i do remember 2 45s for certain. one was tina turner and the other was michael jackson (thriller era.) i used to listen to them when i was 5 years old on a fisher price record player. one of the first lp's i ever owned was the monkee's greatest hits, and i had a chipmunks' christmas album that had the story of alvin and his golden echo harmonica. for almost 15 years i've forgotten about vinyl, and now at 20 i'm appreciating it all over again with bands like shotmaker, hoover, slint, the promise ring, maximillian colby, cap'n jazz, frodus, & blur. thank you mickey dolenz...
jay donahue {potter@voicenet.com} Vinyl fetishist. Harumph. Might as well be a Citizen's Band enthusiast. I have roughly 600 cds, maybe half that LPs. I can tell you that I'd give up all my vinyl before I'd part with ten carefully chosen cds. Yes, it is possible to get clearer sound with vinyl than any other format. But you have to have at least a thousand dollar turntable and buy nothing but thick, virgin, dye-blackened vinyl. (This accounts for the often irrepressible elitism many vinyl fetishists exhibit - if you haven't got the dough for the best sound system, you may as well not even listen to music at all.) Yes, the "care and feeding" of vinyl can prove to be a rewarding hands-on activity, and maybe there is something special about wiping on the sacred liquid from the red bottle - an extra little bit of interaction with the music - but there is nothing more aggravating than bringing home a brand new record that's already gotten warped or scratched. That's something that happens all too frequently now that vinyl is no longer the consumer's first choice. Compounding the frustration is the fact that vinyl is just too damn hard to find. I like the instant gratification of going to a store, finding the title I want on cd, taking it home and hearing it that same day. I don't want to bother with special orders that take weeks. Which is not to say that it isn't fun to pull out those gatefold double albums - the Shaft soundtrack, say, or the V.S.O.P. Quintet - and take the crackles and pops along with the music, fooling yourself into thinking you're having a deeper experience because of it. But once it's over, I personally am glad to be able to follow it up with a Brainiac cd, confident that I will possess this music in the same clean, clear condition years from now. Finally, if you actually believe that the very best music can only be found on vinyl, I pity you. You're missing out on a lot.
lester {ralphlb@connect.ab.ca} 7-inch records are only available on vinyl + the 7-inch is the most heavenly pop format out there = vinyl is necessary for the further production of heavenly pop. or, something like that. In the early '80s I made a pilgrimage almost every week to Wax Trax in Denver to buy obscure records I'd read about in NME or Trouser Press so that I could play them on the weekly late-night show I did on KGNU in Boulder. Sometimes I didn't even care much for the music, but I thought it should get played on public radio anyway. This got to be an expensive hobby. It was an exciting time musically, and going to Wax Trax was like venturing into an exotic world in search of hidden treasures. I've made the switch to CDs; my turntable lies dormant in the basement along with about six crates of records. But there's something about a 12-inch vinyl platter in a cardboard sleeve that a shiny silver disc just can't duplicate.
Ken Beegle {kbeegle55@aol.com} Most of my vinyl experiences that I remember involve science fiction (musty futurism?) The earliest memory is from '77 or '78 (i was about 4 or so) when we had an LP
Okay, it's DERRICK SMITH! {smufus@iei.net} When I ran away from home at 18, the only thing I took was my 200 vinyl memories and a beat-up Zenith turntable. After too many "bad beer nights," in college, my album covers became one through dried beer spillage: sticking OMD to Cheap Trick, Dead or Alive to Ted Nugent. After college, my now-ex-husband insisted that since there was no turntable that the vinyl went into a box and into the basement, where so many were ruined... yet another symbol of how that relationship had destroyed me. After the divorce, the vinyl went into a cleaner box and stayed in my living room (consciously because of lack of storage space, unconsciously because of the fetish?) for 2 years. Now, my angel-savior-boyfriend has moved in, and he has brought the sign that he is perfect: a turntable. I asked him if he would dance with me in the living room. We put on a 12" of Bronski Beat, and for the past week, we have been singing "Why..." There's something so cool about knowing you finally found the right guy... I remember moving to America and going to see Xanadu. It was the first movie I went to by myself and twice. All I wanted to do was Rollerskate!!! My first 45, not by Disney, was Xanadu. My most valued records are those of Jean Jacques Perrey. A truly brilliantly serious humorist and artist. I will also never forget helping my boyfriend move over 20,000 records this summer!!!! Pro-vinyl from dust till gone...
L.H. {quanum@pacbell.com} There are two distinct memories for me, The most enjoyable aspect of vinyl for me is the searching. I'm still trying to get all of the 7 inches put out by my favorite band and when they have pressings of only 1000 or 2000 then it's truly a hunt. Usually you find others that are equally into the band and the search itself is so much fun. The Excitement I feel when I discover a new indie record store in another part of the city is hard to explain...That's why Vinyl is still huge with us indie rockers The second most enjoyable aspect is a memory of the day Lennon was shot. I was 6 and my dad played his old Beatles records (which I've now inheirited..as he's switched to CD's) over and over again.....I realized music was powerful
Jeff Burke {jeff.burke@worldnet.att.com} When I was 12 growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania, our neighborhood had a big rivalry with another neighborhood that we settled with football instead of fists. Our team ran the option, plays we created in my friend's basement as we listened to Iron Butterfly and Tommy Shondell on the turntable. We pumped ourselves up to the scratchy music, lifting the arm and setting the needle back down until we were ready to face our oppenents.
kevin zozula {zozula@mail.brigadoon.com} high school in the '70s was all about records and drugs. we'd skip out first thing in the morning and go to my house. i'd throw a 'Tonys' frozen pizza in the oven, twist up a splif and spin some Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. we'd just hang out all day and listen, that's what got us through school. phil
phil {phil.launer@mci.com} I more or less grew up on CDs, but I still remember my vinyl. I put in the chipmunks and other Disney and sing-a-long stuff. The Chipmunks were my favorite, though. I also remember I decided it was time to grow up, so I got "modern" stuff. I got a record of The Police and played that until even my teenage sisters told me to turn it down. When I finally got sick of that I put my record player at double speed. It sure sounded like the chipmunks, alright. I'm a DJ and still buy lots of new release vinyl that is not available on CD. I was flying home from a record buying excursion in California. At the airport, the x-ray security guard asked me to empty out my record bag. He had never seen an image that dark on the x-ray screen. I played my Queen and Kansas albums growing up but the vinyl that really made an impression were albums on 4AD from the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Lush, Throwing Muses and Pixies. Designed by Vaughn Oliver, these album covers are abstract photography and typographic jewels.
DeadAir {jesse@tripod.com} I DJ'd at the college radio station. Cueing up vinyl was both a pain in the ass and a precision task, like measuring liquids in chemistry. My fetish is cueing up a song so it starts Just Where You Want It, and then rolling it back a quarter-turn by hand to give it that split second to get up to speed...
Rena {rena@vertigodesign.com} Being that I am a mere 21 years old, vinyl died for mainstream music far before I could ever get my hands on it.. However, as a high school freshman I went through my mothers record collection in the attic and found that she had at leas 20 albums that I had on cd, most noticably the White Album, and Dark Side Of The Moon.. I will never forget the first time, I dusted off her recodr player and poopped on dark side. wow.... If you never have, put on dark side and leave the lid open or off, if yuor player has one.. It is entirely different with the sound coming right off the record, as well as through the stereo.. try it, and let me know what you think.. Once I heard that, I have tried to replace all my cd's with albums..
Josh {jmkross@wam.umd.edu} my first record was saturday night fever and my second was grease. i'm so happy john travolta is back. i missed him.
ali {muney@dnai.com} I had a freind who never took off the clear plastic shrink wrap once the record was bought. I remember the look on his face when he finally found out that the cover of"Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd was not just a plain dark solid navy blue. Maybe not the best vinyl memory but definitely a you had to be there moment.
Ray Darmstadt {rayd111@mindspring.com} I was a tad too young to fully appreciate vinyl. I was on the cusp of records and CDs, not yet old enough to appreciate either. I collected mainly EPs, which I thought were just black CDs that sounded funny. I will always remember wondering why my Mini-pop's EP didn't sound as nice as my CD I had of them. I thought the blackness meant it was bad. So I got rid of my Never-ending Story Theme song EP and all that ABBA stuff my parents gave me. I only wanted the shiny-reflective music thingys. I liked shiny things, I still do. There is no point to this story, other than possibly that the success of CDs could be based on their shiny draw.
Emperor Penguin {turnip@jive.ml.org} ...ahh. making love through an entire album side. timing orgasms to the last groove on side two. The Blue Jays. Abbey Road.Darkside of the Moon I miss the original order of presentation on albums that have been converted to cd. My timing is devastated, my sex-life dismantled. CDs run too long, now, for this body. CD singles not quite long enough..my home made tapes only play in the car. sigh. I thought I had outgrown backseat sex.
duchess {duchessa@hotmail.com} When I was 19 I owned a donut shop in Tulsa. That would be 1979. I had to get up really early to open it. I listened to the fm rock station which had a contest of health food type questions. Being a 10 year vegetarian I knew all the answers and being that I was one of the few up that early I won 4 times. The prizes were albums. I won picture discs of Jefferson Starship and Spiro Gyra. They were really cool. Unfortunately years later I sold them in a yard sale when I was really broke & short on storage space. It still nags at me that I let them get away.
Julia St. James {Notownie@yahoo.com} I have never owned a vinyl record. The only LP I've listened to is "Sgt. Pepper's lonely hearts club band" by the Beatles, at a friend's house. But I do have one experience with old records that was interesting. In 8th grade, I was looking through the National Geographics on a rack at the back of the class - mostly old ones, ripped and faded. One of them had an article on Winston Churchill, and as I was flipping through it, a small plastic square fell out. It was a record, a recording of one of Churchill's speeches. It was flimsy plastic, and probobly sounded terrible, but it struck me that with decades-old technology, they were doing something that can't be done as easily with CDs or cassettes - to let readers actually hear the person they are reading about. Something I haven't seen done recently, in this age of multimedia and digital audio.
Hokuto {identity0@hotmail.com} I was five, my parents bought me the double-album Grease soundtrack. Keep in mind that I had never seen the movie, but I fell in love with those songs. At the same time, I also developed my first crush. Her name was Laura...she was thirteen. She would come over everyday and let me play with her hair while we listened to the albums and she sang along and told me all about the movie. We would sit together and caress the photos that lined the inside cover. I still have that soundtrack. Sure, the cover is broken down the middle and held together by duct tape, those pictures are almost rubbed away and the albums themselves are warped, but i dont' think I'll ever be able to get rid of them.
jewels {jewels@iqzone.com} years ago listening to the smiths or clan of xymox or the temptations soothed and cleansed me for consumption by others. now it's the stacks of 7" vinyl and vintage english beat, thelonious monk reissues on riverside, sunship singles, and (god!) the talking heads that lead me to bliss. there's a party in my mind, and i hope it never stops. Ok, my first vinyl that I bought with my own money was Mr. Roboto by Styx, and I listened to it on my Fischer Price Record Player (red and white checkerboard). after that I faded into buying CD's (when I reached high school). But some 5 years later, re-discovered the joy of vinyl. Digging through thrift store bins excites me, when I spot something I wouldn't spend over 2 bucks for because there is only one song I like on the record, I grab it. The act of flipping a record over makes my spine tingle. Is there a better sound than the one the stylus makes when you hear the click of the auto-return kick in, and next the muffeled pop as it rests in it's holder? It's the sound I listen for to know that I am home.
daniel constien {constiende04@uwwvax.uww.edu} More so than the music contained therein, there was nothing as exciting to me in junior high than the toys and booklets that came in every KISS album. Slip that record out, put it on the plastic turntable, and occupy myself with the geegaws that came with the album. The stickers. The photo albums. The posters. The paper love gun. The new compact formats can't deliver the extras like albums could.
Steve Foldvari {SteveF@sonicfoundry.com} digging through pappa jazz used records in columbia, sc | everything feels and smells worn ... even the people in the store | freaks heads fratties townies all hunched over alone but not | sifting shifting on rainy afternoonz | i don't like jazz but it sounds different in here cozy warm | don't even have a record player but take home a few anyway Freaking out on a particular guitar sound on the first song on side b of the Negative Waves album by BORED! It goes just like WRRROOOOOAAAHRRRRoooooOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM. It sort of creates a feedback in your soundsystem which makes your speakers vibrate. And that thing can only be experienced when listening to the vinyl NOT the cd.
b.b. I'm young and did't start listening to music seriously til after the demise of vinyl. I started buying records out of curiosity and because I found with a little patience you could find really cool stuff really cheap. What I like the best is that they're like 3x bigger than CDs and the album art looks 100% more amazing as a result.
phil hoyt {furst66@hotmail.com} Memories, nothin'. After buying nothing but cd's for close to ten years, I just began buying new releases on vinyl because they just sound so good. Digital = breaking music into digits that represent little pieces that are then reassembled. With vinyl - or any analog form - the music stays whole. Although the cd is more convenient (sadly), I know that most true music appreciators who really listen prefer vinyl. I'm planning to put together a site called "Analog Life" dealing with this topic. If anyone has any relevant URL's or information or just hearty opinions, I'd love 'em.
daryl shawn {highhorse@mhorse.com} After much hesistation, I changed to cds but only because the quality of the available vilyl was deteriotating quickly. Any person with experience in music will tell you that cds suck. They compress the music to 20% of what you get on vinyl and yes, it's those parts you can't really hear because our ears can't go beyond that spectrum. But then again, would you willingly give up a significant amount of colors on your tv, just because you can't really see them? No, I wouldn't either. Especially music rich in tonal diversity suffers the most, classical for example but also music with lots of guitar distorsion because so much gets cut off. And cds are anything but durable, if you don't keep them in pristine condition, they just start to skip and the whole thing is basically fucked. not so with lps, sometimes there is a certain scratch (since I love my lps they hardly pop at all) that just gets incorporated in the listening experience and memory. The only advantage cds have is that they're comfortable to use and store, but there you go again: it's the handeling not the listening experience that counts. And personally I loved the way an lp cover can age with dignity, cds just get scratched up and look shitty after a while. I just wish there would be more decent vinyl around, most new releases are like 30 grams of vinyl compared to 180 grams good records use which forces people to buy cds, even if they actually prefer vinyl. But there's still to few people choosing music over comfort too make a difference and right now vinyl sales account for about 3-7% of the sales depending on the artist. /i.
ivo {ehrhardt@hannover.de} Listening to an old 78 of Max Bygraves singing "There's a Tiny House." My mum's mum used to play it to her when she was a child. Then my mum played it to me. Now I play a tape of it to my children - its too brittle now to be played. I wonder if my children will play my old CDs to their children or their grandchildren?
Ross {ross.hall@easynet.co.uk} Terry Smith, the tomboy next door and my best freind, turned me on to rocknroll when I was 5 or 6 (she had older siblings). I fell in love with `Wipeout" by the Surfaris and had to have it. I saved my 10cents/week allowance till I had a buck to buy it and then I had to order it (this was in 1967). I played it to death, then I took it to show and tell. I spent the day sitting on it to make sure no one would steal it (when I was in grade 7 at that same school some asshole stole my Aladin Sane from school. The teacher let us listen to records on a group headphone thing while we were working) Anyhow, the 45 of Wipeout had a crack all the way to the label but it still plays if you line up the edges. Yes I still have this disc and tons of other vinyl. I have played the same record on vinyl and CD and switched back and forth and the CD deffinatly had the better sound (L.A. by X). The reason I bought a CD player though was to get stuff that was previously available only on 78. The last vinyl I ever bought brand new (I still buy tons of used stuff that is totaly weird and will never be isued on CD) was Julian Copes `Interpreter'. It had a skip that functions as a locked groove right at the end of `Space Rock With Me'. I decided this was a special bonus feature and didn't return it ( the fact that the store is on the other side of town also had something to do with it). Locked groves are one feature that CDs can't replicate. When the needle gets to the end of the record and the last bit of the song just keeps playing over and over and over... it's a magical moment.
Fred {fred_1007@hotmail.com} The end table of the couch at my Geemaw's house (Geemaw=granmother) was polished wood, becoming worn about the edges. Approaching the couch from the end, you saw the meager 12 or so LP's cached in the stand below it. I remember Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Cinderella. I remember being allowed to take thse wonders from their sleeves and hold them while Daddy or Papa (Pa-paw) cleaned the turntable. These records and their placement in my granparents home are as much a part of my memory as gleefully chasing the cats. Something I took for granted. I remember when I was old enough to place the needle on the record. (We called them records. Not vinyl, not LP's.) I remember being the one to balance the penny on the needle arm. I'm sure these records are worn out by now, or warped, or lost, but I can still feel their dry carboard feel under my fingers. Their edges were all soft from admiration. I can hear the shlepp shulllp shulllp of a needle bouncing from the center. I am a little girl, curled up in my chair, filled with security, satisfaction, and drifting off to sleep. there are still a few privateers like me who didn't "jump at the chance" to unload their lp's for the cd revolution scam. that's why i'm here. for the time being i'm in some northern county of new england awaiting a star freighter that is currently orbinting mars. by the equinox i'll be aboard and heading for the outer dust rings of this system and later on to a world called "tanak". so my fondest memory is that i've still got over 2k stashed in a storage facility and if i can crack the weights program in that freighters' computer i intend to off-world these babies along with the rest of my duffel. i've fallen for a psi-princess, or rather she's fallen for me, out in the rings and she has a turntable, big as a fridge "klipsch" speakers, preamps, boosters, and, aw heck, you name it! well, you did ask, that's the story, now, if you don't mind, theres a bottle of rum with my name at the bottom of it. - the sloganeer
the sloganeer I experience vinyl all the time as a house dj in london. it's just nice to go to a record shop called Vinyl junkies and indulge every month. I have a record by Derrick Carter which is pure electronic soul and i want it played at my funeral. I like it because it has a scratch at the beginning, like me it's not perfect. my first vinyl was "7 & the Ragged Tiger"...i still have it, as well as every other Duran Duran vinyl I could get my hands on. i collect vinyl now, especially grand royal releases. there always will be music that sounds so much richer and true on vinyl.
93octane {93octane@usa.net} When I first met my wife, on our second date, we went out to have a few drinks at a local tavern. We were too drunk to drive so we walked 3 miles to her house..felt a whole lot better by the time we got there and then jumped into her Dodge van and we were supposed to retrieve my car. In route, we got horny and decided to "park" at a local sports park in a dark secluded area. We jumped in back and started making out and doing some "touchy feelies". Fortunately, we didn't have our clothes off yet when a police officer who was trying to get his jollies snuck up on us and flashed his light into the van. We simply laughed and opened the door..told him we were a bit pre-occupied but nothing serious. He left disappointed that he didn't get any free T&A shots.. After he left I had my first "vinyl" encounter. We were seriously making out and I began humping on what I thought was was her strangely COLD crotch. After several attempts to get to get her hot, I discovered that I was humping the vilyl van seat. She asked if I was "making friends" with her car seat. I was a bit EMBARASSED and we both laughed. That broke the ice. I then showed her my "moon dial"..anybody know what a "moon dial" is? Take a guess..yup..it was my hard as steel rod creatinga long shadow in the moonlight..it must have been a yard long! We couldn't calculate a very accurate time, but that didn't really matter. We enjoyed ourselves and she was in extacy over my "moon dial". To this day, she still loves my moon dial and I make sure what I'm humping before I start! I guess that I can say if you're in a pinch and don't have a girlfriend, vinyl car seats can hold you over until you get lucky. If that doesn't do it for ya, get a bananna your size hard, put it in a dark drawer until it turns pretty dark, approximately 2 days. Cut it to your size and squeeze out the bananna. Place the lubed bananna skin over your cock and go to town. You may even want to nuke it in th microwave for 1/2 minut. I've had better banannas than I have had some women. (My wife is better and that's why I married her...cheaper on the bananna bill too.) Steve
Bananna and Vinyl Lover Reading through the "other" postings, after entering my own experience, I have realized that this site is for LP people. PLEASE, accept my most humble appologies if I have offended any person, party, or group..... But the Bananna's are "WONDERFUL" :)
Vinyl and Bannana Lover (Continued) First and most memorable vinyl experience was KC & the Sunshine Band. Shake your booty was the track which I just loved. I was in sixth grade at the time. I hadn't a clue what it meant but I dug the tune. And I felt so adult at the tender age of 12. I was doing an adult thing, buying a record. Buying music quickly became an addiction, although most of it went to tapes because I did not have my own record player (parents wouldn't allow it) and portable cassette players were just coming into being. In tenth grade, in a fit of juvenile indifference, a friend and I took all the LPs which I did have and played frisbee with them in the streets until they broke. Disco was uncool and I had to purge my small collection of uncoolness. :-( All of this was mostly sublimated until two things -- the film boogie nights and the reader stories here. The film's title brought back memories of the second LP which I ever bought -- the one with the hit single, "Boogie Nights" on it. After seeing the flick, I so regretted having destroyed all my "uncool" disco LPs. Well, it's off my chest now. Casettes suck. I don't have vinyl anymore but at anytime I can easily recall how important it once was to me, how it helped me define myself for others as I was growing up. I still love music but despise the music industry so much that I find it hard to buy music in any format -- I just can't seem to find the CD/Album/Cassette that I just must have and therefore pay precious money for. steve
steve My fondest vinyl experience was last night, when I listened to the new Donovan albums I just bought. Vinyl is alive and well.
don Since I'm one of those child-sized adults (size 3 feet) I was never allowed to touch my boyfriend's records - my hands didn't extend long enough from the spindle hole to the outside edge. I loved going to 3rd Street Jazz in Philly and digging in the cutout section. I was ecstatic when I found the new Pigbag release or something by Klaus Nomi(?)(neither of which I've *ever* found on CD), or the Specials. To this day I still have my 8-track player and my pink Inna Gadda Da Vida tape.
Sheryl {sheryl@sightmap.com} I grew up on vinyl. Having been born in 1976 I awaked to music at age five finding my dad's huge vinyl collection which grew bigger every weekend being fed from the local supermarket. He also had an 8 track player on his car stereo. As a child I would get all the new releases for kids on vinyl and play them over and over again. They were about 20 pesos each, in the early eighties. Then the cassette tape came in and that's what all my friends went raging on. Walkmans and boom boxes were it. I have to admit I love tapes even today, I love them more than vinyl, maybe because tapes were the trademark of my pre and teenage years and vinyl was more of the early childhood. So hiss for me is far from bad as any good "musician" or sound conoisseur (as Im supposed to be) would tell you. I love hiss because it reminds me of those days trading tapes in school, recording romantic songs for that special evening or heavy metal hits to drive by with. But this is about vinyls, oh yeah, well, after the tape rage they became scarce and then, oh, then the CD came. Now, I like good sound and all, but I can't get to love those CD's over tapes or vinyl. I just witnessed too many mexican teenagers rush to the United States to fully replace their vinyl and tape collection with their same CD version. Kids buying CDs because it was the new gadget or just to listen to one song. Of course I bought and buy CD's, is not like I try to boicot the industry by myself or anything, but I truly prefer the hiss and the fastforwarding to find That song than watching numbers on a screen. My actual friends were born in 1980 and most of them see vinyl as some kind of retro thing from far before their time, most of them have never operated a turntable before. Me, I still have a turntable and cherish like no one my dad's bossa nova vinyl collection. And now that vinyls are making their so called return thanks to retro fads and techno crap, well, here in Mexico there are few old music stores that sell them for, yes, 20 pesos still, which is about 2 dollars. I just bought some Kraftwerk vinyls the other day at that price in mint condition and the owner of the store told me: " yeah, we are trying to get rid of all those discs we want them gone". He definitely not knowing what he was selling me for 20 pesos.
mario Lopez {mario_alberto83@hotmail.com} i played in a band once and it was my life. the last song we ever released was on a 7inch single. i still don't have a copy. hope when i do i will look back at that band with all the love i still have for crackles and pops.
craig {tinear@netcom.ca} My fondest memory was when I was a kid and my older brother (from whom almost all of my musical tastes flow) was still living at home. One of the smaller headlines splashed across the morning paper that fateful day was the overdose death of Keith Moon, drummer for The Who. My brother, a massive Who fan, quietly left the breakfast table, went into his bedroom, closed the door, and played "The Song Is Over" at earbleed level. It was as fine a dedication as I've ever witnessed.
Catlyn {catlyn@mindspring.com} After finding that amazing antiquarian record store on the other side of the city, I have never shopped anywhere else for my music. It's the smell of the old vinyl that fills you with excitement as soon as you walk through the door. What compares to the joy of finding that one album you've been searching for, in it's original splendour? Artwork actually visible!! Born in '81, I grew up listening to my mum's beatles LP's, but now I buy my own!
Tali {non_existent@hotmail.com} i never got around to getting a CD player...i'm 24, and i started buying music in about 1983, on vinyl and cassettes. well, cassettes sucked, so i stopped buying those, and by the time CDs came out, i didn't want to replace my entire [then meager] collection. so i fight on, browsing used bookstores for old gems, and depending on indie label mailorder and a couple of shops around DC to get my newer vinyl. you make so much more of a commitment to the music when you play an LP...taking care in every step, to make sure it'll sound OK...and with 45s, it's even more magnified...you sit down for a 3-minute pop song, to get up again, flip it over, and sit and listen again. there's nothing like looking at a beautifully done gatefold album... i will concede that they are a pain in the ass when it comes time to move homes. LPs leaning against my unit's speakers right now: Sleater Kinney's "The Hot Rock", the new 45 from Hot Pursuit, Yo La Tengo's "Painful", and Air Supply's Greatest Hits...
hershal {fileunder@yahoo.com} My mom and Dad had everything on vinyl! I could flip through a stack of records and see everything from Phoebe Snow to Led Zeppelin. In eighties I think that people began to sniff too much glue because the notion of tapes became popular, followed by the advent of compact discs...BORING! There is a certain excitement that follows pulling vinyl out of its cover, hearing the crackle the record makes when the needle hits it, and eventually the continous drone that repeats over and over when the music ends. I became a feind of the compact disc only after it became the latest trend in high school. I felt I had to own everything being released on disc. It became a mad competition between my friends and myself to see who would own 'Doggystyle' first. Anyhoo, I neglected all the great vinyl my parents introduced me to in the fist place. When I moved out of my parents at eighteen I took all of the old records they owned with me, sort of a momento of ma and pa. Little did i know I would listen to them-over and over. I swear I've heard 'Rumours' by Fleetwood Mac a thousand times! It reminds me of my parents love. When I hear it I wonder what they must have thought the first time that they heard it in '78. My turnstyle broke a while back and out of the goodness of someone's heart I was bestowed with another (THANKS B!). So I've been able to continue listening to Steely Dan on a breezy summer day, and Santana's dreamy guitar riffs can still drone out any pops on a twenty-year old record. Also let me give my shout outs to all the boys who hook it up in my own very backyard on the turntables with they're own collections of beautiful music. Thanks guys! My fetish remains with the way you bop your head when the music comes together in those gigantic headphones of yours. If vinyl can make a person be so happy. let me cherish it for as long as I can afford to buy it.
L. My fetish is not with vinyl, but rather cassetes. Being born in the mid-eighties, i had little chance to familiarize myself with records. My parents had already replaced most of their LPs for as long as i can remember. I, instead, looked past CDs into the slightly more affordable, already decryed audio cassetes, then specifically blank tapes. While others may romanticize vinyl pop, i more relate to tape hiss. The thrill of the perfect mixed tape was a pride i found nowhere else.
Nick {nickpare@netzero.net} Paul Simon -- the Beach Boys -- Eagles -- Beatles -- The Dillards ---- My parents allowed me to sift through their collection and I would listen to them non-stop. It is this music that I associate with my childhood and it was this album collection that I inherited when I left for college and my parents' taste had graduated to the digitized CD. It's difficult, if not almost impossible, to find a turntable these days and I stubbornly refuse to get rid of mine. It dwells in my closet and is retrieved when I'm feeling especially nostalgic. Long live vinyl ----- as long as it still survives, so does my childhood.
Jen Massie {jjmassie@ecst.csuchico.edu} 45's were the only game in town when I was a kid, because albums just cost too much for one thing, but this wasn't the main point. The best part of playing 45's was that you could learn how to play any break, cop any solo, note for note (if you had the chops!) by just lifting up the needle and going back to the beginning of the break. You could actually see by the thickness of the groove where the solo started, and if Chuck Berry's left hand or Sonny Boy Williamson's Harp licks just flew by too damn fast for your inexperienced ears to handle, well, you could always just slow...it...down.. by flipping that little lever on the side of the platter from 45 to 33.This was also great cause you had to learn that break in two keys; the higher for the fast, real version, and then I think, a fifth (or was it a fourth?) lower for the "tutorial" version. Also, I can remember getting so good at placing the 45s on the platter that the black or yellow center thingies became superfluous; Look straight down at it, center it up - boom! I recall the turning platter itself was metal, and covered with some kind of cheap fuzzy stuff, and you could hear it slightly grind, and then pick up speed until you knew it was time to drop the hollow tin arm on Chuck or Bo, or Otis, or later Eric or Jeff or...whoever. By that time though, I had a cousin who was a DJ on WMCA who came across BIG TIME with every LP I ever even thought I wanted (This was definitely an act of outrageous kindness and generosity, but is actually a whole other story), and this was of course great, but unfortunately it introduced me to STEREO, and made it so much harder to go back to the little brown cardboard suitcase record player from Macy's that I had in my bedroom. The LP's of course had to played on the family stereo in the living room, and then there was that problem about not being able to pick out the breaks and slow...them...down. Although I definitely heard about them, I never did see a turntable that played any slower than 33 until much later in life;(just last year,in fact. It was a monster of a machine I spotted in a garage sale in upstate NY, came complete with a set of Armed Forces Broadcast records WWII vintage that some true collector would probably give his left nut for) but by then I had to admit that my days of copping licks were pretty much over.
Tom D {mystad@ix.netcom.com} artwork. lps had the greatest artwork on thos 12" squares, that you could pore over. i know almost every time i listened to my lps i would hold the cover in my hands and read the lyric sheet, list of artists, and for lps like parliament and funkadelic, the insanely funny, multilayered art on the covers. i also had a habit of twirling the cover on my fingertips as i listened to the music
kamau {dr_funkenstein.com} I found a copy of the Meters, "Rejuvination". Mint condition. Canadian release... All I need now is some Skull Snaps... peace
ceo {jgilmore@theglobe.com} Grew up a desert rat with tight jeans, achey-breaky hair, and the appropriate desert rat soundtrack. Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, Journey, ZZ Top, REO Speedwagon - the hair bands. All on vinyl. Soundtrack to my youth. I've burned all the evidence. But every now and then I gotta drop a Van Halen CD into the stereo - experience that early 80s flambouyance a shy skinny kid from Tucson lived vicariously through the music.
Jimbo I grew up on vinyl. When I was young my father bought a new stereo and I wasn't allowed to touch it without supervision. The reverence he had for his records is still a vivid memory: the special cleaning equipment, the special cases for the extra needle, the care with which he handled the records. I got the old, beatup, portable turntable to play my old, beatup records on. It was wonderful to be five and feel like an adult because you had your own personal turntable. Then I discovered my older sisters' Monkees albums at the same time they outgrew them--and my life was complete.... I don't know what happened to tht turntable, and the newer one is sitting broken in the basement--replaced with a cd player. But there is still a record cabinet in the living room and when I visit my parents I pull down the shelf and look through it. And I treat my cds with the same reverence as I was taught for the vinyl--even if they don't quite deserve it...
andrea {asd109@yahoo.com} I was born in 1974 but I have NEVER owned a record player. My father said that TAPES were better and LPs will be phased out by tapes: he got it half right. I always felt deficient when I was a kid because ours was the only home without a record player. I would go into the store room, and stare at my dad's records in a box and the broken record player and then go out and BEG my dad to get it fixed to which he always replied "Why? Tapes are better, cheaper and you can record on it. Go play with your tape recorder." Then by the time I could afford my own stuff, record players had been phased out by CDs!!
Yan Sham-Shackleton {yanipoo@yahoo.com} Loves the look of vinyl and other shin materials !
Rubber_x {Rubber_x@hotmail.com} Favourite vinyl experience - Selling my turntable and buying a CD player. You can rabbit on all you like about "the vibe" of vinyl and that "digitizing the music kills the analog continuity" but the fact remains that CDs sound a fuckload better and don't get worn out. Pity you can't grab the disc and run it backwards and forwards real fast under the laser.
Meshuggener {mechapoitier@yahoo.com} I was born in '78 - or so I've been told. Perhaps it should have been '45 or maybe '33 and 1/3rd. I dunno. Anyhow, I grew up playing the Moody Blues and Baja Marimba Band and Deep Purple (pre Machine-Head) and Jefferson Airplane and the Guess Who and Mason Williams and Mozart and Carlos Santana and Walter Carlos and Waldo de los Rios and anything else on my dad's Garrard turntable (custom installed in an old Victrola cabinet; the headphone plugs into the hole where the hand-crank used to come out the side). In '85, dad bought a CD player. It went into the cabinet with the turntable and the cassette deck and the amplifier - the open reel deck obviously didn't fit inside. The CD player never replaced any of the others though, it was simply another means of playing whatever we felt like hearing at the time. Freshman year of college, I realized how much I missed the musical variety my father's collection offered. I had already gone through two CD players (danged contraptions break too easily, and I can't make head nor tails of all them itsy bitsy innards) and I hated paying for the shiny little discs. Since then, I've upgraded through about six turntables (current one being a Technics SL 1200MK2), four amplifiers (Sherwood HP 2000), countless loudspeakers (BSR DR1550R), and one jukebox (1974 Wurlitzer Americana). I love records for their price; if you're patient and know where to look, you can find virtually any album you want for less than a buck (new releases are an obvious exception, but they still cost less than their equivalent CD's). I've picked up more than 6,000 singles and 1,500 LP's averaging less than five cents apiece. Through garage sales, resale shops and record stores, I have access to 50 years of recorded music. Just name one other medium which offers that longevity and versitality. Plus, I've never seen a turntable I couldn't fix. I readily agree that CD, DAT, DVD and (arguably) minidisk offer a silence and crystal clarity which vinyl does not, but for their price and relative lack of available repertoire they don't even compare to the value of a good record collection. In the end, nothing quite approaches the experience of cueing up Floyd's DSOTM in full quad while watching Wizard of Oz on a projection screen. Eat your heart out Dolby Digital 5.1... you been beat.
bemis I was born in 1980. I don't remember all of the vinyl we used to listen to as I grew up, I know Marty Robbins was in there and Bob Dylan. I do remember specifically that my favorite record was Johnny Cash, Live in San Quentin. Johnny played either San Quentin or Boy Named Sue twice because the crowd loved it so much. The gritty blue-tint picture of the Man in Black sitting in front of the mike on the cover. To this day the only thing available is a compilation CD of Live in San Quentin and Live in some other place, my memory fails me right now. The San Quentin section of the CD is about 5 songs total, it does not include the repeated track, and I would go to all ends of the earth to get a working record player, if only I could find a copy of the original vinyl anywhere.
Zachary {zkent@apple.com} I still have about 400 LPs with the ex - someday we have to separate them but we have not been able to do it - I know which ones are mine - he thinks i might cheat him - all i really want are the jim speeris, beegees, r.stones, b.springfield and so many others - at least 250. I lived with a girl once who treated them like playing cards - mine are all in mint cond and when i was at my little brother's funeral, she took them all out of their jackets and they were all over the floor, onto of each other - i wanted to scream being messed up from the funeral anyway - i did not leave them with anyone else ever again - i tried to keep them in alph order but the ex and his bro could not do that well - it took me days to find golden earring - under ring it was - so i gave them a lesson on how to file names of albums as opposed to names of groups - they never got it - too many drugs around in those days - so some of my favs got scratched till i moved them upstairs. i loaned my original - with the zipper - one of the stones and never got it back. never loan. i still have the beegees velvet red covered one - i have been thinking for days of going to get them since i cant replace some of them - i almost have as many cds now and twice as many tapes but still there are some i cannot replace - spirit, the big ball and others like that - dont know yet if i can find speeris and then there was ricky - but i cant think of her last name - too bad i have to work it would be a good lp day kat
Kat {prairie3@juno.com} Madonna's _Like A Virgin_. I was in 5th grade, and I got a turntable of my own and that album (along with Bon Jovi's _Slippery When Wet_) for Christmas. And suddenly, music was *mine*, and it's been a love affair since. Some people do drugs...I buy music. That album, which I still have, just never, ever sounds the same on CD. Those scratches and pops and skips are how I will always hear the songs in my head.
stephie {the8rgrl@aol.com} The fondest memory would having to be completely flying on acid staring endlessly into Rodger Deans art work on the inside cover to YES: Close to the Edge. I would have gone blind trying to do that with a cd, or at least lost my mind. Analogy sound is a sound wave, digital sound is a representative sampling of a sound wave at singular moments of time strung together to try and recreate a sound wave. No matter how often you grab a sample of sound you will never be able to sample the entire wave (as proven by the theory that you can cut a line in half infinitely and never run out of a line to cut in half, you just get a really small line). But none of that mattered to the people who realized that we all would pay $15 for a cd, as opposed to $8 for a record.
pet3Er kraftwerk. The first electronic music ever. and german. i would die for that. QaS
QaS {florian@floriandobler.de} so i was born in the 80s. tapes had and 8 tracks abound. so vinyl was just sort of a rumor for me. and i started to grow and grow. started to become an adult. to love things. to feel things. and music became one of them. i fell in love with the expressive power encased within each song. and i was exstatic. so i bought cd after cd. but i still didnt own a single record. no 45's n 7"s. nothing. not until my bloody valentine. i had 'loveless' on cd, but i was so in love with it. and it came into The X our local super-indie record store. and i bought it. and it was totally new. loud and brilliant in a new and different way. with a hiss that id never heard. i was shaking. cord after cord of beautiful transcendental distorted hissing. i spent that night listening to it over and over. switching sides. moving the needle at random. just seeing where it took me. somewhere the digital world couldnt... Spike's seen experimenting with the Admiral Entertainment Center's record changer, the brown floor box with FM simulcast that falls silent during DJ-mono. Adding Neo Passe' Blues Band won't make it slide on the Kweskin Jug Band stack. Cool. Silence causes time to slow in the two story 30's beachouse. A stirring somewhere, feet pad, raised metal arm, LP flop and needle pop; then Geoff and Maria begin again.
Ken Spurling {skippers@clipper.net} Madonna. Like a Virgin. (good god - I think I'm going to cry...) A Picture Disc.
dora {bk258@torfree.net} Well I lived in an extreamly small town and when I had hit my early teens my friends and I out of sheer bordom introduced ourselves to drugs. I had large bedroom in the basement of my house and had couches, chairs, coffee table, etc. Since I had easy going parents, my place became the hangout of choice for my friends and I who had recently become devoted lovers of hash & acid. The best thing though was that my parents had also given me their old stereo. The record player was in perfect shape and it had these amazing hardwood cabnit speakers. ( I swear they don't make them like that anymore, or if they do, they're to damned expensive for the average shmoe.) So anyway my friends started bringing over any records they could find from home that looked half interesting. One day I bought 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' for .50 cents at a yard sale. This is without a doubt one of my favorite memories, sitting around my room on a saturday night with about 10-15 people doing an endless 'hotknife' session and listining to that execelent Black Sabbath record fill the room. Alas, one day years later I left for college and when I came back for christmas my dad had thrown out that stereo. "I thought it was garbage." he said. Godammit! if you could have heard those speakers. I bought that sabbath album as a remastered C.D. recently and while I admit age and drugs may have fogged my memory somewhat i'm certain that it does'nt sound the same. There is definitely a loss of sound quality. That's o.k. though, i've still got all my records, I just gotta get a dammed record player.
.....ah vinyl memories! {die-die@mydarling.co.uk} My fondest memories are the earliest...sitting on the floor amid a pile of golden 78's. Not that I'm so old, but EVERYTHING was hand-me-down...I remember the dribbling sound of my parent's hi-fi as it cycled...The day I discovered that 78's could be played with a fingernail... Those disks were nearly indestructible!! (nearly) When I was six my dad gave me some new LP's, but the Osmium would'nt play them. Within days I had scratched them all (OOPS!)... And so now, after years of cassettes (I've never owned CD's) it comes full circle: Digitizing 78's at 39 RPM, and playing LP's with top notch diamonds. Wait-- maybe THESE days are my favorite vinyl experiences.. :-))
Geminga {jfr0827@pshift.com} Vinyl was the glue that held my young adulthood together. I spent my immediate post-highschool years working in record stores, which at the time was the pinnacle of my career ambition. The main point, besides getting to listen to music all day, was that holy grail of all retail workers: the discount. I could buy anything in the store for 25% off, and did. It turned me into an instant record snob. I had subscriptions to Rolling Stone and Spin then, and proceeded over my first 6 months to buy anything that was labeled a "critical favorite" -- I was careful to align myself with the official arbiters of taste, and by the end of the summer I had two Napa Valley crates full of LPs to show off to less discerning friends. I still own two of them. I did learn the value of taking a chance on a band that summer, though -- it was cheap enough to experiment, and I was surrounded by people who were passionate about their favorites. Some became mine too -- Todd Rundgren, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, the Beat Farmers. We had a required playlist, but made most of our daily soundtrack from a huge pile of "defectives" that had been opened by someone with a musical point to prove. I buy everything on CD now, since my turntable's long gone, but I still have that 18-year-old voice in my head that says "This song is really good -- I should buy the album."
Carol Gunby {raku@well.com} I still buy massive amounts of vinyl and still own and play almost every record I ever was given or bought. Some have been stolen from me (people in college, do NOT lend out anything you care about, make dub tapes--I am warning you). Some I gave away because they were hideous. But all in all, I still have everything. Spent last month dubbing my recent ex-boyfriend's vinyl so I can return it to him. I'm making case liners and enjoying the process immensely. I've mixed CD and vinyl recording son the same dub tape. They co-exist peacefully. My ex-BF was not kind to his vinyl. It's extremely nasty in spots. I've coaxed the sound back out of it and it's like archeology. I was given Pete Best's Best of the Beatles, and if the prior owner treated his LPs like I treat mine, it would be worth over $500. It's probably worth nothing in the condition it's in, but getting a song out of a badly abused album is a nice challenge sometimes. There's a definite difference in sound between a (well-maintained) record and a (well-maintained) CD. I'm pro-vinyl. My CD collection is slowly catching up. I buy lots of music every month and used records cost $3. Used CDs cost $6-8. Sometimes you can't find things except on vinyl either because the CD release was so limited or because, duh, they were never put on CD in the first place. Generally, I will settle for whatever format I can get a song or album in if I must have it. I prefer CDs for portability purposes but I will happily buy and listen to an album if that's the only way I can get the songs. Recent examples: David Bowie's Lodger. $18 new CD, $12 used CD, $3 used pristine vinyl. I buy the vinyl. John Cale's Paris 1919--after looking for months for a used copy in vain, I ask and discover that a new CD has to be ordered, it costs $16. Can't find vinyl anywhere, exBF's is trashed. I buy the new CD. Played Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald 45's for another ex-BF who stopped by recently. He was pleased to hear NKC he'd never heard before--and it was almost like time travelling. I'm not particularly old, either--I just love music and will take it anywhay it comes. I could have been less passionate and never had any vinyl, but (un)fortunately, I've listened to music avidly and with an embarrassing degree of mild snobbery since a young age. If you don't like my music, we won't ever be close friends romantically-speaking. If you like music I find vile, I'm going to mistrust your taste in other areas. If you don't understand why a CD is more sterile and cold sounding than a hunk of vinyl, that's okay, but I'll assume you have a tin ear...even though I admit it's POSSIBLY purely the power of suggestion that leads me to hear a difference (even though I was able to spot the difference when audio-quizzed a few years back). Eh. Vinyl has a tactile sensual quality to it that little silver diskettes can't achieve. The fact that it requires a hunt is part of the appeal. It is like an orchid, it needs care and feeding and fussing. But it flourishes even with neglect in ways that CDs don't bounce back from...
Milla {MALINDA@NOSPAM.ENGLAND.COM} Album art definately died with the LP. Masterpieces like the Stone's Sticky Fingers with a working zipper, Led Zeppelin's Physical Graphitti with it's voyeuristic windows, ELP's Brain Salad Surgury and it's opening skull... I remember putting on Iron Maiden's Live After Death double album after seeing them in concert and setting up the album jacket and both inserts covered in concert pics. I stared at the photos for hours while cracking the jams and re-lived the concert experience. You just can't do that with a 5 inch CD cover. Ah, the memories...
Dan {zigdog1@aol.com} You take out that that big black disc and put on your turntable, give it a wipe with your cleaning brush, make sure you have your tunrtable set at the correct speed and then you pick your tone arm up and take it to your fav track then CLONK! Its the best sound ever! My fondest memories are from when i was about 7 yeas old, i would play a get record while sitting on the floor watching the record spin which would take me to some far off place.
Andy {andshim@aol.com} you know, i never even remembered this 'til just now but when my mom and i first moved in with my stepdad, i must've been like 4, i used to sit in the living room while he was at work and look through his lp's. it was a lot of 70's era rock and i remember some of the covers were really scary and even tho i was scared i was just all into looking at them. i know he's still got those and i suddenly want to go over there and look through them all again. When I was a child of maybe six or seven years, my Aunt and Uncle gave me their old Dansette record player; probably the most popular record player in Britain in the 60's. It came with a stack of 45s. Although the player is long gone, a victim of emigration and a non-compliant power source, I still have many of those records. Amoung the Jim Reeves, Irish ballads and a mountain of other intollerable pressings, there shine gems such as Buddy Holly and Ray Charles. While other kids had little read-along discs and Disney-issued records, my listening pleasure came from the likes of Dusty Springfield and even Patsy Cline (which would explain one or two things, I suppose). Nothing, however, could come close to matching Ray Charles singing "Take These Chains". I drove my mother nuts with it. I still have it and, like many vinyphiles, have memorized every snap, crackle and pop. At one point it even resounds its blemishes in time with Brother Ray himself, becoming a kind of acoustic instrument in it's own right. I wish I still had the original player but my apartment is crammed with vinyl of every description. I'm just glad I stumbled across your site to give my obsession some kind of clarity and lend it sanity. Thanks. Great site!
Stevie {stevesdead@hotmail.com} I'm 18. I grew up with vinyl. My mother was one of those who had a huge stack of it and never tired of playing it. I knew Yes and Jethro Tull before I ever heard of Nirvana (I still don't own a Nirvana recording of any type.) I had a good start on a vinyl collection before I owned any CD's. This summer I spent a good amount of time looking through second hand shops for a turntable to take with me to college. People in the dorms still can't believe the fact that I brought a turntable and my favorite albums. But I did, and they'll get me through more rough times than any CDs I own.
Leia {http://dweeb@yours.com} The first album I ever bought for myself was Dreamboat Annie by Heart. I still have it. I love the art. One square foot of art, in your hand. Being deft at placing the stylus just so, flipping the record between flattened palms, alphabetizing, adding, competing for the biggest collection. Stewart Copeland, the man who played drums for the Police, secretly released a solo album under the name Klark Kent. I have two, one of which is clear green. Fantastic. Marbelized Hounds of Love by Kate Bush. "Baby Regattas" - Regatta de Blanc by the Police, placed on two smaller discs. My Buckingham Nicks gatefold. All of it. I have over 500 cds.
delana {nyxan@aol.com} I used LPs to get to know classical music when I was in junior high school. (I'm a music history professor now, so it must have took.) My parents had a nice component system--it went with the teak furniture--but their tastes ran from Ferrante and Teicher in "Phase 4 Stereo" through Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (I have that "Whipped Cream" cover as my computer wallpaper right now), Bllod, Sweat, and Tears (oooh that creepy cover to "Child is Father to the Man"), and EVERY damn Chicago album. I couldn't afford to buy my own classical albums; but I did have a library card. The first album I remember checking out was the soundtrack from Kubrick's 2001. I heard the Blue Danube Waltz and I was lost. I can still remember those LP sets, encased in unbelievably thick flexible plastic covers that were already, in 1975, starting to yellow and fragment. Often the records were perfect, though. (Not that kind of town, Medford, Mass...) I became a classical junkie, and I would listen to anything, especially if the library also had a score. I would be sitting in our living room with, say, Wagner's _Siegfried_, on 12 (TWELVE!) LPs, totally tripping on the fact that this piece of music took over 4 hours from start to finish. I'll never forget finding a boxed set of all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas--it had about 16 discs and was like having your hands on the contents of the Louvre. I remember the first time I bought a classical record. It was in Boston, at Lechmere's ("Where You Pocket the Difference"). I looked for a recording of Beethoven's "Pathetique" sonata, which had obsessed me to the point of playing my library copy over and over. I found one, paid my $$ and went home. Imagine my incredible disappointment when it sounded totally different than the one I had memorized. I had no idea at that point that individual performances of classical pieces could sound different. I threw the record away, and began to pay attention to the name of the performer as well as the composer. (Wilhelm Kempff, BTW, and I went to a better store and got it soon enough.) I got my own stereo system in high school and set it up in my bedroom. Oh yeah...while you all were turning the lights off and listening to "Dark Side of the Moon" and Yes, I was lying in the dark orgasming to Mahler's Sixth and Richard Strauss tone poems. And the Rite of Spring, which I learned about off a (library) set of lectures called "The Unanswered Question" by Leonard Bernstein. The only pop I had was the Beatles. Every album I could get my hands on. Those were the first albums I bought on CD, when they came out one by one in 1987 or so. I have basically moved over to CD, since classical music is simply not released on vinyl. I don't have strong feelings either way--but I *do* remember the endless agonizing battle against clicks and pops in my classical vinyl. It was exactly like having a new car, and waiting for that first scratch in the paint. Many of y'all penning odes to vinyl listen only to pop music; if you had ever tried to listen to the *really* soft passages of any symphonic piece after the 10th or 11th playing, when the popping and hissing were like body blows because you were so focused on the quiet...you'd realize that the "cleanliness" of CDs is not some marketing gimmick. (Remember, the clicks and pops were always loud, even if the music was soft.) Anyway, I've got you all trumped. I collect *shellac* now. You want "truth"? Get a 1918 Victor Victrola XVI and put on an acoustic 78rpm recording. Never mind digital--you've got pure mechanical linkage from the artist's violin or throat to your ear. And you want something to fetish? Big, heavy, totally breakable, not even playable without hours of research and restoration... Once you've had shellac, baby--you never go back. PLUR
robert fink {rfink@ucla.edu} I grew up in a unique time where our family room contained a record player, a tape player, and a cd player. Some of my good memories of vinyl are from sitting on the floor watching the sound activated light box (interesting little thing) while my parents sat on the couch and smoked. We all just sat there and listened. It was one of those bits of peace you rarely get in a house with five kids. I even remember that some of my toys would come with those silly little records that you could play (the ones that look like the inside of a 5 1/4 floppy). Mom doesn't have a working record player anymore, but every now and again we'll pull out the stacks of albums and look through the art and lyrics. I'm really disappointed in CDs. When I get a CD and it's got one sheet in it with a picture of the band and that's it, I’m devastated. No great artwork, no lyrics, no tributes. It's like getting half of what you pay for. I really wish mom would get her turntable fixed.
Shaden A couple of things come to mind. My freshman year at uc santa cruz and not realizing that the black box I put my albums on was a heater. Oops. But my fondest memories are playing a Tennessee Earnie Ford 45rpm of Sixteen Tons of Number 9 Coal (or whatever it's titled) without the center thingy and off center, so it sounded all screwy and hilarious. And playing a polka album at varying speeds over and over again while hanging out with my friends drinking beer. I've never played a cd in my life.
gregg {gk@pacific.net} Still buy vinyl, still have a turntable. I am 29 years old. I go to locally owned record stores where people who still play vinyl (not just dj's) go and buy records. Records are big and vinyl is yummy. I feel sorry for people who only have cd's. Cassetes are the worst.
Kevin {klawsun@yahoo.com} Ahhh vinyl...the little black disk's which have given the world so much pleasure. CD's can't claim that, they have been around that long :) I've grown up with music (on vinyl of course :) ) and the strongest memories being able to use a record player at a really early age and wearing out my parents copy of the 'Shadows 20 golden greats Volume One'. No mean feat since vinyl can take a lot of punishment. The neighbours knew when I was awake because they heard the 'Shadows' :) The record is long gone but the cover is still around now protecting a collectable 'Shadows' record that I found minus cover. I still remember the day a speaker fell off the wall and toasted the record player and my copy of 'Remember you're a Womble'. I was not a happy chappy. It can still play (yes I still have it :) ) but it has a nice hole where the cartridge dug into the record. Let's see a CD survive such treatment... Now I have my own stereo and pride of place in the stack are my Techics Sl2000 and Akai Sp-005 turntables and just recently my record collection has over taken my tape AND cd collection, no easy feat at 24 years old :) Here's hoping vinyl shall live on and provide more pleasure for people, no mater if it is in cover art, family memories or the warm sounds that made you feel the artists really felt for their music. One thing is for sure, my children will grow up with vinyl in the 21t century. Long live winyl :)
David {unkouth@xtra.co.nz} Working for my college radio station for the past two years, I've been playing all cd's. Being a modern rock fan, I always figured all the stuff myself and my listeners wanted to here was in the post-vinyl era. One night during a late night shift, I wandered into the stations' vastly huge vinly library. Since our station has been around for almost 50 years, we have tons of vinyl. Upon taking a glance through, I started finding albums from modern rock bands that were never and will never be released on cd. Soundgarden's "louder than live", a live album from the late eighties was one of the first vinyl records I played. From that starting point, I played nothing but vinyl during that shift and vinyl has become an integral part of my shows to this day.
Jon {reissj@rpi.edu} I'm an 18 year old Dj (born 26/6/82) and every day is a great vinyl experiance. The dance culture is massive with the 17-30 crowd and so although the is the dessimation of vinyl in mainstream music, is is certanly not unusual to use vinyl
Anthony Sweeney {anthony.sweeney@brent.gov.uk} I remember being very ill at the age of 12 with a form of meningitis and the ONLY thing that got me through that pain was my vinyl and my headphones. I would spend hours every night listening to Adam and the Ants and Ultravox thinking I was the only kid in my town to listen to such COOL music. I recently bought a new turntable and have sinced enjoyed playing my old vinyl more than my CDs. Gary Numan anyone? I used to listen a Vynil of Bob Marley that i really love until i sell my turntable, i bought the same album on a CD, it is not possible, it don't sound like my vynil album, i love Vynil, what can i say more ???
Duncane My sister brought home great music in the 70's. I listened to a record called "Sheherazade" on one Easter morning. What a great sound! It is about Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. I remember listening to it secretly when she wasn't at home one afternoon. No one was home and I turned up the volume and was enveloped in music! Darned if I can remember the name of the group 20 some odd years later. Not classic. Anyone know?
Laura {LauraLeeta3@yahoo.com} taking my mate clubbing for the first time to the steering in birmingham. we'd both popped pills, so i said" lets go for a stomp", as we climbed the stairs to the dancefloor, the dj dropped Whos the badman by dee patten, the place kicked off and my rush kicked in, i'll never forget that feeling!
nigel {nij01@aol.com} Is my story less valid if I am too young to have fond memories of vinyl Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, OMD even? I remember coming into music right at the end of the vinyl era, trapped in a bedroom in middle England, overprotected and expected to have good manners and good grades at my leafy girls’ school. I wasn’t drooling over George Michael or Simon le Bon, but I couldn’t help having a thing about a bunch of American guys mucking around with the music they liked, doing it their way and not really caring whether they were fashionable or not. (They were.) In the summer of 1986, I fell in love with the LP “Fore!” by Huey Lewis and the News, much to the chagrin of my trendy classmates. And in 1988 I fell in love with their unknown support act, Melissa Etheridge, and adored the picture of angst on the big red sleeve of her eponymous first album. With these two albums began a love affair with all that is American that endures to this day, as I trip backwards and forwards to be in my American home as much as I can.
Catherine Hay {s.ivanova@lycos.com} Like many others here, my parents had a self-contained "suitcase" record player. They never had many albums, although I think they owned every "Sing along with Mitch" album produced. My sister and I used to buy 45s and play them constantly. The Osmonds, The Partridge Family (I know, I know, but hey, I was 7!). My first album was Double Vision from Foreigner. When I was in high school, I bought a JC Penney special, with a turntable, cassette player and an 8-track player! Got it for $100 since it didn't have a dust cover. I would buy vinyl and, to a much lesser extent, cassettes to play on it. It got me through college, where there was a big record store in town that constantly had a huge selection of used/cut-out vinyl. Again, as with many others here, I have never thrown away any of my LPs, even if I have bought the cassette and now CD to "replace" it. To this day, I can still spend hours looking through piles of LPs (at antique shops no less!). For me, rock and classical music on CD is fine. But for jazz, it HAS to be vinyl. Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Maynard Ferguson, Chase et al - that just isn't music unless I hear it from my Bang & Olafson RX2 turntable through the Adcom GFA555 amp and Polk SDA-2B speakers, as loud as our cat can take it, with all of the pops and hisses that define jazz to me.
37 years young Some time in mid 1997 I was, and remain, one of those people who love Coltrane. Any life you are having could have a Coltrane soundtrack. Anyway... I had a friend who loved Coltrane more but was wearing his father's handed down brown leather pants too often to pull it off. He became spiteful. I asked if I could borrow his CD copy of Olé Coltrane to burn off one for myself. He said that he would have lent it to me had I not told him that I was going to burn it. I knew someone's someone with a burner and I was going to save me some money damnit. I had done some panel beating work on his Morris Minor and I thought allowing me to burn a copy of his Olé was the least he could do. There began a parting of ways and a catty, fickle, offhand pissing contest. Sam started to mess around with my ex, I sabotaged his chances with a prospective woman, he told my then girlfriend about an infidelity, and I sabotaged his chances with her by telling her about his cock ring. By chance during all of this I went to a local record shop. They had Star Wars figurines in the window just like the one I lost on my seventh birthday in the park while the kid who gave it to me was still there, and about a dozen copies of Space Oddity. Just cruising through some of the jazz it was there. An original Atlantic issue copy of Olé Coltrane for $12. This was nearly twice as old as I was. I brought it home and played it over. I said nothing to Sam, but someone else told him I had it. He came over one day to get some left over paint from the Morris panel job as he was moving to the country. He didn't say anything about the record. Before he left town for good I gave him my old record player to take with him. I had upgraded with another self repaired op shop special. He only had CDs.
michael {chemicalsbrother@hotmail.com} I've never understood why people dug vinyl to the extent of which they did. When my older sister lived with her then-boyfriend, they had, I think, 4 crates of records. I saw them when I stayed over. Vinyl is big in the punk culture. I remember looking at a record in Hot Topic with a sticker on the back that said, "PUNK SOUNDS BETTER ON VINYL", or a phraselike that. I didn't understand why. In Pearl Jams "Vitalogy" album booklet, it tells that CDs are "bad acid". There's a song on there called, "Spin the Black Circle". You know what it's about. I thought maybe people liked it because one (with eyesight) can see the music happening. I never felt anything while watching a record play...nothing that a record lover might. Towards the end of the vinyl fetish story, I understood more why vinyl is loved: It's imperfect...it needs care...people who care for vinyls care for music. :) I look forward to listening to my Le Tigre record in my room, where it lays on the round deck, waiting to be played.
Jamian {Dudein3D@aol.com} I loved adolescent days spent with new LPs, listening to the music while gazing at the cover art and following along with the lyrics on the big inner sleeve. I loved the unamplified sound of the needle running through the grooves that you could hear if you put your ear close to the tone arm. I loved most of all making the rounds to the independent record stores in Miami in the early 80's (Open Books and Records in North Miami Beach and Yesterday and Today Records in Greater Miami) and FLIPPING through the inventory, looking to see what gems had arrived -- sometimes checking out a new band because of striking cover art and sometimes finally being able to put a picture and image onto bands that I had only either heard on the college or community radio stations or read about in a typewritten/photocopy zine.
John Everett {jeverett0902@hotmail.com} I remember buying my first "big girl" vinyl LP when I was 10. It was The Beatles' "Let It Be" and I got it at Zody's. There were cardboard boxes full of the new release stacked in the main aisle of the store, so I knew this was special. I had to sneak it in to my house, as my parents did not approved of those "drug taking hippies". What a rush. I also go back to a time around 1976 or so, where my friends, the Arthurs, and I would blast "Turn to Stone" by ELO, and turn the knobs on their Atari Pong game to the beat of the music, creating this primative music video on the screen. I don't know why, but it was so intriguing. Wow, I'm going way out there, huh? OK, my greatest find to date is finding a original vinyl copy of Ramsey Lewis's "The In Crowd" at a garage sale for $1.00. It plays perfectly.
Karen Sheeler {nahikuroad@hotmail.com} No real experiences or memories here... Only an old faded redish photo, circa 1986. I was one year old and barely able to stand on my own (funny, I find myself barely able to stand on my own even now!). I lean on a tacky bulldog statue my parents kept in the brown shag-carpeted living room. I don't know who to blame for this, but I'm dressed in a light blue sweat suit (bulky diapers peeking out the back), a black bandana, and gargantuan, sqared, opaque shades that cover the majority of my face- everything but the toothless grin...and the drool.I'm smiling the way only a kid can smile (honestly), but I'm not the only one smiling. Who's that in the background? Why, none other than Steveie Wonder(!!!)glowing on that LP cardboard cover, braids and all. So it's just the three of us in the picture: the dog, Stevie, and me. Smiling blindly and blissfully. *ahhh...I miss those days*
JaneDoe {Roadkillkitten@hotmail.com} my parents always used to play Huey Lewis and the News "Sports" album when I was younger, and i would jump up and down for a few moments until i realized that the music was skipping. my parents scolded me, telling me that my jumping was the cause of the skipping. i always watched my dad handle these pieces of music with the utmost care, until i finally got my own player, a Zenith, 1950s, tube driven Cobramatic. it sounds magnificent. I was in a thrift store one day when i came across my second gem, a white Magnavox Stereophonic with fold down table and swing open doors, made in England. Im only 18, but if i see anyone touch my collection of records, ill kill them. i will, and without remorse. even though my albums are the newer underground indie stuff (Modest Mouse, Sigur Ros, The Blood Brothers) i still have my old classics too, Abbey Road, The first Jimi Hendrix and the Experience album, as well as limited edition singles. Vinyl rules.
Adam {repeatclicks@yahoo.com} My parents "War of the Worlds" musical record completely freaked me out as a child. I could not listen to it because it scared me so much. I don't suppose that is really a fond memory though. I listened to it the other day and I can't figure out what was so scary about it, although I have my suspicions that it was the book that came with it rather than the music. I was raised listening to my dad´s 45 rpms of rock'n'roll records and that made me have kind of a crush on them. When I was in highschool and started my dance parties activities, I started the LP part of my life. We used to gather around somebody´s room to listen, sing or just talk. Our major sexual affairs started then and with each heartbreak there would be a certain song for it. I still have most of the 45s and LPs with me and when I play them once in a while, my kids sit on the floor (just like I used to) and listen carefully to the sound on the turnable. They bring me back to those golden days that one can never forget, when things were easy to do and nothing bothered. I love each and every record and always will until the last day I can listen to them. Those are things that the years can never errase from my mind.
Nei DePaiva {bigbop@hotmail.com} I love everything about records. Art on the cover. Vinyl in my hands. Watching the record spin 'round on the turntable. The pure, analog sound coming out of the speakers. I even searched for an all-in-one boombox with a record player. Goes all the way up to 78RPM, but the needle's cheap as a bird...nevertheless, I use it often. I have but a few records -- Alan Parsons, a couple Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel -- but I have such a thirst for more. If ever I were to become a semi-famous musician, I'd release everything I made on vinyl. There's nothing like falling asleep as a record slowly turns on and on.
Jon A. {milesattacca@gmail.com} I remember mistrusting cds when they came out. "Perfect sound forever" seemed too good to be true, and my mother had always warned me "when something sounds too good to be true it usually is." At the time I had only just started buying records, and although I only had maybe 20 albums, I didn't want to start over with a new medium. Eventually I bought "Are You Experienced" at the local Bradlees for $6 (was marked $16 but the cashier goofed!!), and soon I was buying as many cds as LPs. But I still mistrusted them; there are albums that are 50 years old, and acetate discs at 100, but how long would cds last? I began to hear stories of cds oxidizing through the plastic after only ten years. I noticed they started selling "gold" cds which would "truly" last forever because gold will not oxidize. Yesterday I played "They" by King Missile on cd, and noticed a strange crackling sound that was never there before-- similar to dusty vinyl, but with a weird digital edge; the cd was getting digital errors (oxidizing I assume?) and adding a fuzzy sound, like a DAT tape pushed over the edge. "Perfect sound forever"? Yeah, right. The music industry has convinced us to toss our record collections for a digital pipe dream. They've even mananged to get some completists to buy the same album multiple times (The Byrds albums have been released THREE times on cd, each one different: 1st rush release, 2. digital remaster 3. digital remaster with extra tracks). The great irony/comuppance here is that now, after raking in the dough for years, the magic of digital sound has come full circle, and record companies are finding that their great invention (music as digital information) is being passed around for free on the internet. HA ha!
c. lichat {christhecat@excite.com} my father was the first to show me how to care for records. what was described in the story is exactly how i was told to clean those precious pieces of plastic. as a child in my parents house, i had to be careful when i was playing upstairs. if my dad was listening to his classical music you'd hear, 'hey hey hey hey...i've got a record on' that was enough to stop a thundering herd of kids. my own record collection is now well up into the hundreds after working in a used music store. my dad has embraced digital music and ditched his old zenith hi-fi, so i stole his records to make sure they'd still get some use.
joram d {joramd@gmail.com} |
