There's something about vinyl

There's something about vinyl - I don't want sonic perfection. People aren't perfect, after all

I recently purchased a record player. It's definitely a step backward in our world of constantly advancing technology. Imagine using gears, belts and needles in the age of sensors, microchips and lasers. Yet that's exactly the way I want it.

To start off my collection, I wanted to explore the decaying cardboard boxes in Dad's basement that hold his stacks of old records. He's happily used his compact disc player for years so I didn't think he'd put up much of a fight over them.

I wanted his Dylan. I wanted his blues greats like Mississippi Fred and Son House. I wanted his Duane Eddy, Led Zeppelin and Buddy Holly to line the shelves in my own apartment. But most of all I wanted the Fabulous Wailers. They were a group of young men from the Pacific Northwest who pounded out gritty garage rock. It was a record I had listened to religiously as a child, while I bounced along the carpet miming Tall Cool One on my air guitar. I had to reclaim them all.

"Those will be worth something one day," warned my dad before I left. "You be careful. You can't get those anymore!"

Well, not exactly true. Garage sales and thrift stores are golden places to find vinyl. Saturdays are now reserved for rummaging. My eyes widen like tin pans as I sift through the usual piles of Elton John, Trooper, Liberace, Streisand and Pat Benatar. The hope is that buried somewhere in a musty yellow milk crate at a church bazaar is an original Nick Drake record.

We've lost this thrill of the hunt. With music downloading programs like Kazaa, we can get all the songs we could ever want. But that's like shooting fish in a synthetic barrel. Last week at a flea market I found a fire-damaged copy of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album for 50¢. The sleeve was smoky, but the record itself had escaped injury. I took it home, washed off the dust and debris, and gave it a spin. It sounded beautiful.

Vinyl enthusiasts will argue that records have a wider range of frequencies than a CD -- that they sound fuller and warmer when compared with their digital counterparts. Either way, there's nothing like the satisfying scratch-pop as the needle settles down or the random skipping on nuggets of crud-covered grooves. There are spots that I refuse to clean because I love the way the artist's voice will repeat and create peculiar loops like: "see see rider, see what -- see see rider, see what -- see see rider, see what."

It's really these imperfections that make records worthwhile. Vinyl can break, bend and scar. Records are organic black slabs stuffed inside sleeves as big as the music itself. LPs are also designed and organized to flip, like chapters in a book. I don't always want to listen to hours of music. Our culture is bent on maximizing everything: Supersize that DVD with movie extras and bonus concert footage. Sometimes I just want to listen to one side of a record and then fold over my musical bookmark.

Likewise, I wouldn't go see a live band to hear them robotically replicate songs from their album. I go to concerts for the tangible connection between one human being and another. Musicians frequently make mistakes or alter songs. That's fine. I don't want sonic perfection. People aren't perfect, after all.

If there is a downside to vinyl, of course, it's that you must enter a collector's world to participate in this fringe subculture. It can be intimidating to ask a tubby record store owner or a snobby young clerk about certain albums. Vinyl record shops are often hip and exclusionary places where collecting rare treasures is just as important as the music itself. And with the rise of DJing, hip-hop and scratching, it's even become cool to merely own a record player.

However, this doesn't dissuade me. I still use compact discs and I frequently log onto the Internet to download songs. But neither of these media taught me how to love music. I first heard recordings like ZZ Top, Dire Straits and those Fabulous Wailers on a record player. I felt it spinning then and I feel it spinning now. It even inspired me to pick up the guitar.

My dad doesn't have to worry; I know those records will be worth something one day. Because they always have been.

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Good to hear from someone who likes vinyl but he's mistaken about quality. Some records have horrible quality. In the 1950s and 1960s some budget companies (including some that scored hits) use low quality plastic to save money.

In the 1970s, with the "oil shortage", RCA and other companies used cheap production for their releases (extra thin records that scratched easily).

Mobile Fidelity issued some of those same albums in a better format. Today some of the best quality records ever are being pressed (new and reissued albums). They weigh between 180-240 grams. Put the needle on one of these records and the difference will become apparent.

I saw an article in Sound & Vision magazine where one of the journalists said something along the lines of, "Remember when CDs came out and the reviewers said that now you can throw your albums out because the sound will be better, well those frequencies you've been missing will finally be heard with DVD-Audio/SACD..."

Records do sound different. It's also easier to find a turntable that uses tubes than a CD player that does (they were made though).

The banding of sides is also another point (certainly after a point in the 1960s albums were considered as a progression of songs rather than a collection of singles with some filler). That break between sides in some cases IS a part of the design. With CD playback it is lost.

Another reason for collecting the vinyl LPs (and even singles) is that sometimes the CDs don't even have the same mix of the song that actually became a hit on the radio back in the day. Radio today plays the CD remix. Sometimes there are completely different takes on the LP and single and sometimes the singles were even later overdubbed to sound more "contemporary". It even happened to Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison recordings.

Either way, there's nothing like the satisfying scratch-pop as the needle settles down or the random skipping on nuggets of crud-covered grooves.

Noise is satisfying? Scratches and dirt on your vinyl is a good thing? Progressive wear on the album is progress? Shopping for the right needles and weights is fun?

Doesn't anybody else remember shelling out for separate preamps and then pop and click filters? And the usually muddy album mixing for lowest common demoninator playbacks that made them trash to begin with?

This guy is an idiot. He can have all my old vinyl whenever he wants to pull them out of my trashheap.

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