vinyl
hanging around record town the other day, shooting the shit with sumter bruton and his illustrious ex-juke jumpers bandmate jim colegrove (now with lost country) got me thinking about record store culture, an environment where i learned most of what i know about music and also one that doesn't really exist anymore.
now, inasmuch as i'm not a big one for nostalgia -- believing, as i do, that the unwillingness to live in one's own time constitutes a form of cowardice that i donwanna practice -- i have to say that even resources like amazon.com and allmusic.com will never take the place in my heart of grubby little mom-and-pop rekkid stores like the one i worked in as a weird, asocial teenager, where you could hang out for hours soaking up info and getting the clerk to spin you tunes (in the same way as "clubs" will never replace old man bars in my affections; one reason the wreck room is my fave rawk club on earth is that it's really just a neighborhood bar with a music policy, albeit one with the best soundman on either extremity of the metromess). around the time the big chains started purging employees with long hair, tattoos, or body piercings, and forcing the ones that remained to take drug tests and wear blue polo shirts over khaki pants -- which had the inadvertent effect of banishing anyone who knew anything at all about music in favor of mostly high school kids who, um, don't -- i kinda lost interest in shopping in mainstream rekkid stores. i could say a lot more about this, but nick hornsby has already pretty much done the riff to death already (in my favorite chapter of songbook as well as the more obvious high fidelity).
that said, i will admit to having resisted cd's on the basis of "whythefuck should i have to pay for all that stuff _yet again_?" until 1) my sister bought me a cd player, ca. '87; 2) movers broke my last turntable, ca. 89; and 3) my future ex-wife gave away all my _good_ vinyl records (precipitating a frenzied trip to every goodwill store in shreveport and bossier city, louisiana, in the course of a single evening, ca. '90; no luck).
i'm no vinyl fetishist, but a coupla yrs ago, i noticed that it was becoming possible to score loads of classic vinyl for ridiculously cheap (as long as you avoid the ads in the back of collector's rags and stick to thrift stores, garage sales, half price books 'n' the like). so last year, kat 'n' i decided to spring for a turntable as a kind of birthday present to each other. she still had her old rekkids and i had a growing stack of vinyl that i'd received from various ppl during my 15 minutes as an internationally renowned internet scribe and contributor to the local giveaway futon-'n'-hooker-ad vehicle. unfortunately, i broke our new acquisition's belt before its stylus could kiss the very first groove, and attempts to find a replacement locally proved futile. (amazing how hard it can be to find a flimsy rubber band, although i've recently learned that the folks from forever young records in grand prairie -- an establishment i avoid as assiduously as i avoid gtr center, and for the same reason -- have a booth at the saturday flea market at will rogers coliseum, where such trifles can be obtained.) a few weeks ago, i finally got around to e-mailing the turntable's manufacturer, who graciously sent me a replacement belt for free, and we've been enjoying it ever since.
a few observations on the vinyl experience:
1) as accustomed as i've become to the _convenience_ of cd's (like all of my fellow americans who've grown obese and indolent as our garage door openers and remote controls removed the need for even the slightest exertion from our existence), i kinda like the fact that vinyl listening is a lot more _interactive_ of a proposition than cd playage: you gotta _get up_ to change the rekkid every two to 20 minutes. (i was never a record-changer kinda listener, like my ex-bud who usedta stack up all the pink floyd albs on his changer at the beginning of each acid trip, so he could pass the next 4-5 hours in goggle-eyed relative immobility.)
2) listening to rekkids (as opposed to cd's) reminds us that less _is_ more. sure, i'm a greedy bastard just like everybody else, so i want bonus tracks and 80-minute cd's. but the fact of the matter is, nobody really _listens_ to an 80-minute cd. our attention spans aren't hardwired that way. in that sense, cd's (and ipods, and streaming radio, or hell, even old-fashioned radio its own self) are a better medium for _background music_ than active listening, whereas the more labor-intensive process of vinyl listening kinda _demands_ your attention. back when i had the discretionary income to do so, i actually shelled out $180 for the stooges funhouse box set on rhino. before i had to unload the thing to help keep the lights on during unemployment, repeated listens to, no fooling, 23 takes of "i'm loose" taught me an important lesson: that whoever it was that chose the takes that went on the original rekkid had pretty good ears and sense, and so that's the version i still reach for whenever i want that particular thrill (and i still dance all over the house to it just like i did when i was 14, too).
3) now, beauty is in the ear of the behearer; it's a completely subjective call, so i wouldn't presume to say definitively which one -- pristine digital clarity or organic click-'n'-pop-laden analog -- sounds "better," but i gotta say that to these feedback-scorched ears, there's a certain appeal to the imperfections of the old format which prolly has more to do with feeling comforted by hearing things the way i _originally_ heard 'em than i'd care to admit. plus, there are certain rekkids that just didn't make the transition from analog to digital very well, like bobby bland's two steps from the blues, where whole horn arrangements somehow got obliterated in the process of digital remastering. luckily, i scored an original mono version from sumter the other day. now if i can just find vinyl copies of the who sell out and cruisin' with ruben and the jets...
the pleasure of vinyl listening isn't confined to old shit, either. one of our biggest kicks the last coupla wks has been enjoying repeated spins of the 7-inch of the immortal lee county killers' "let's get killed," the way you're supposed to with any great single. as the killers' chet weise (who'll hopefully be visiting the fort this winter) would say: "come on."
now, inasmuch as i'm not a big one for nostalgia -- believing, as i do, that the unwillingness to live in one's own time constitutes a form of cowardice that i donwanna practice -- i have to say that even resources like amazon.com and allmusic.com will never take the place in my heart of grubby little mom-and-pop rekkid stores like the one i worked in as a weird, asocial teenager, where you could hang out for hours soaking up info and getting the clerk to spin you tunes (in the same way as "clubs" will never replace old man bars in my affections; one reason the wreck room is my fave rawk club on earth is that it's really just a neighborhood bar with a music policy, albeit one with the best soundman on either extremity of the metromess). around the time the big chains started purging employees with long hair, tattoos, or body piercings, and forcing the ones that remained to take drug tests and wear blue polo shirts over khaki pants -- which had the inadvertent effect of banishing anyone who knew anything at all about music in favor of mostly high school kids who, um, don't -- i kinda lost interest in shopping in mainstream rekkid stores. i could say a lot more about this, but nick hornsby has already pretty much done the riff to death already (in my favorite chapter of songbook as well as the more obvious high fidelity).
that said, i will admit to having resisted cd's on the basis of "whythefuck should i have to pay for all that stuff _yet again_?" until 1) my sister bought me a cd player, ca. '87; 2) movers broke my last turntable, ca. 89; and 3) my future ex-wife gave away all my _good_ vinyl records (precipitating a frenzied trip to every goodwill store in shreveport and bossier city, louisiana, in the course of a single evening, ca. '90; no luck).
i'm no vinyl fetishist, but a coupla yrs ago, i noticed that it was becoming possible to score loads of classic vinyl for ridiculously cheap (as long as you avoid the ads in the back of collector's rags and stick to thrift stores, garage sales, half price books 'n' the like). so last year, kat 'n' i decided to spring for a turntable as a kind of birthday present to each other. she still had her old rekkids and i had a growing stack of vinyl that i'd received from various ppl during my 15 minutes as an internationally renowned internet scribe and contributor to the local giveaway futon-'n'-hooker-ad vehicle. unfortunately, i broke our new acquisition's belt before its stylus could kiss the very first groove, and attempts to find a replacement locally proved futile. (amazing how hard it can be to find a flimsy rubber band, although i've recently learned that the folks from forever young records in grand prairie -- an establishment i avoid as assiduously as i avoid gtr center, and for the same reason -- have a booth at the saturday flea market at will rogers coliseum, where such trifles can be obtained.) a few weeks ago, i finally got around to e-mailing the turntable's manufacturer, who graciously sent me a replacement belt for free, and we've been enjoying it ever since.
a few observations on the vinyl experience:
1) as accustomed as i've become to the _convenience_ of cd's (like all of my fellow americans who've grown obese and indolent as our garage door openers and remote controls removed the need for even the slightest exertion from our existence), i kinda like the fact that vinyl listening is a lot more _interactive_ of a proposition than cd playage: you gotta _get up_ to change the rekkid every two to 20 minutes. (i was never a record-changer kinda listener, like my ex-bud who usedta stack up all the pink floyd albs on his changer at the beginning of each acid trip, so he could pass the next 4-5 hours in goggle-eyed relative immobility.)
2) listening to rekkids (as opposed to cd's) reminds us that less _is_ more. sure, i'm a greedy bastard just like everybody else, so i want bonus tracks and 80-minute cd's. but the fact of the matter is, nobody really _listens_ to an 80-minute cd. our attention spans aren't hardwired that way. in that sense, cd's (and ipods, and streaming radio, or hell, even old-fashioned radio its own self) are a better medium for _background music_ than active listening, whereas the more labor-intensive process of vinyl listening kinda _demands_ your attention. back when i had the discretionary income to do so, i actually shelled out $180 for the stooges funhouse box set on rhino. before i had to unload the thing to help keep the lights on during unemployment, repeated listens to, no fooling, 23 takes of "i'm loose" taught me an important lesson: that whoever it was that chose the takes that went on the original rekkid had pretty good ears and sense, and so that's the version i still reach for whenever i want that particular thrill (and i still dance all over the house to it just like i did when i was 14, too).
3) now, beauty is in the ear of the behearer; it's a completely subjective call, so i wouldn't presume to say definitively which one -- pristine digital clarity or organic click-'n'-pop-laden analog -- sounds "better," but i gotta say that to these feedback-scorched ears, there's a certain appeal to the imperfections of the old format which prolly has more to do with feeling comforted by hearing things the way i _originally_ heard 'em than i'd care to admit. plus, there are certain rekkids that just didn't make the transition from analog to digital very well, like bobby bland's two steps from the blues, where whole horn arrangements somehow got obliterated in the process of digital remastering. luckily, i scored an original mono version from sumter the other day. now if i can just find vinyl copies of the who sell out and cruisin' with ruben and the jets...
the pleasure of vinyl listening isn't confined to old shit, either. one of our biggest kicks the last coupla wks has been enjoying repeated spins of the 7-inch of the immortal lee county killers' "let's get killed," the way you're supposed to with any great single. as the killers' chet weise (who'll hopefully be visiting the fort this winter) would say: "come on."
posted by stashdauber at 9:53 AM
1 Comments:
I did a Mashup using the drum break from Bobby Blue Bland's "Don't Cry No More" from the album "Two Steps From The Blues" which I have on vinyl, combined with a bass and guitar riff that I wrote. It also periodically incorperates the short samba drum intro to Break On through To The Other Side". the dilemma was whether to try to add high end (presence) to the vinyl stuff or tame down the fizz on my digital bass and guitar. The choice didn't take long to make - it was a pleasure getting rid of all that high end crap on my digital tracks!
BTW - that is another reason people don't listen to whole CD's. All that high end is fatiguing on the ears.
Did a spectrum analysis on the early Beatle's records once. There is absolutely nothing on there above 10Khz
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