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Vinyl
Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Okay, so I really should be writing my novel or, at the very least, working, but I'm not. Instead, I'm listening to records. Yes. Records. LPs. Vinyl. How very quaint of me! I find the most interesting things to do when I'm procrastinating. On the turntable now: Cheap Trick At Budokan.

"This next one is the first song on our new album. It just came out this week and the song is called Surrender." Love it.

Don't get me wrong, I adore my iPod and I really don't know what I'd do without it, but there is something mindless about the whole thing. You turn it on, jam the earbuds in and you can go about your business for the next twenty hours or until the batteries die out, whichever comes first. Listening to records is different. It's an activity. It's something you do, not something you do along with five hundred other things at the same time.

The timing is different when you listen to a record. There are maybe thirty minutes per side, so you don't really have a lot of time to run around before the needle is bumping off the label in the center. If you want to listen to a particular song you have to place the arm just so, then sit there and enjoy the music for three or four minutes while your song plays.

I wrote about listening to records on Spacegirl way back in the year 2000. It's actually the story of a certain song, but I will repost it here anyway.

posted at 10:00 PM . link to this post .

. (5) comments

5 Comments:

What can I say? Your blog (as well as the comments you leave on mine) is just totally awesome and you constantly are talking about stuff that I can relate to.

Vinyl is very cool. I was regularly buying vinyl way into the CD age (in addition to CDs, of course, but I still bought vinyl). I was regularly buying old vinyl albums (mostly out of print, non-CD things) through the late nineties. I don't buy it nearly as much in recent years but I still do when I see something I want and—I kid you not—a minute after I read this post, I checked my email and I just got notification from eBay that I won a double vinyl record that I bid on earlier tonight.

I still have a turntable set up and everything. You're about the only other person I know who still does. My friends all give me their old albums when they want me to make digital copies for them to play on their iPods. In fact, I still owe Paul over at Encyclopedia Giachettica a copy of his "Pac Man Fever" album that he brought over sometime in the fall.

I started a very long blog entry about the demise of the listening experience that began, in my opinion, with the decline of vinyl. That was a few weeks back, but I still haven't finished it. Now that you're talking about vinyl, I am going to have to go ahead and get that blog posted.

By Steve, at 2/22/2006 11:01 PM

I actually didn't have a turntable for a long time. I had a combo turntable/boombox thing from 1985, I shit you not, which I used all through college. It's still at my mom's house, but the speakers are all wonky. I wish I had a picture of it.

Now I have another portable turntable, it's one of those 1950s looking Crosley box record players. It goes with our swanky decor, but we can't hook it up to our real speakers, so it sounds little tinny. Oh well. What records did you win on eBay?

By Angela, at 2/23/2006 12:11 AM

I still get into a tussel over whether I'd rather buy an album as cd or vinyl with some music that is offered in both forms, because I love vinyl. I find it odd that I have people saying to me "oh, records, those are these big things we had back in the day" and I reply, yeah, I have about 40 or so LPs, 3 10"s, and about 50 7"s...there's plenty of bands I listen to that only put out music on vinyl. I remember my dad training me on how to properly treat a record when I was a kid, because he had a ton of them, and one of my favorites (that was mine) was a Sesame Street record.

When I used to live at my campus apartments my room was too small to fit my record player. I was quite sad and missed having those albums that I only had on LP. I could listen to them whenver I went home, which was exciting. Then, when I moved, after living on campus for a year, I was so excited that I had room to bring my record player and records. Although, I admit I'm a bit spoiled with my record player because I can set it to play a 12", 10" or 7" record or to put on the needle manually. I made sure to train myself to do it manually. There was a time that I could pick a specific song in the middle (at least past the first song) of the record and I prided myself highly on that.

To this day I am very careful with how I handle my records. Actually, it was good training because I carried over the careful treatment to my cds.

-Oddy

By Oddy, at 2/23/2006 1:23 AM

Oddy said:

[[[[ ..there's plenty of bands I listen to that only put out music on vinyl. ]]]]

Absolutely. I have a ton of favorites that have never been released on anything but vinyl.

Funny, too, about records being considered "big old things"... Although the "portability" of LPs is virtually nil, I always thought their "store-ability" was perhaps even better than CDs because they are so skinny, even in their jackets. Although you do need substantially more height, you can really stack a whole lot of vinyl records in a relatively small width, with the ability to still see the spine labels. I somethimes think CDs get kind of bulky with their cases.

Angela said:

[[[[[ What records did you win on eBay? ]]]]]

Well, the name of the group is Cowboy and they were a semi-obscure early 70s Souther/Country/Rock type of band with personnel connection to the Allman Brothers. I would wager that most people who know them know them through the Allman Brothers. I am not an Allman Brothers aficianado, but I stumbled across this band anyway.

I won a double album set called "Why Quit When You're Losing," which is actually a 1973 repacking and re-release of two 1971 albums they released. Namely, Reach for the Sky and 5'll Get You Ten. I already have a copy of the former, but not the latter. Now I will. Neither record was released on CD.

Aren't you glad you asked? :)

By Steve, at 2/23/2006 10:00 AM

[[[In fact, I still owe Paul over at Encyclopedia Giachettica a copy of his "Pac Man Fever" album that he brought over sometime in the fall.]]]

And don't forget my "Billy and the Boingers" square 45. I'm actually looking forward to that moreso than "Do the Donkey Kong"....
Oh, and hi, Angela, I have no idea who you are but Steve directed me here, so I thought I'd drop in and say hi. So, um.... hi.

By Paul G., at 2/23/2006 11:52 PM