Records Were Made To Be

I bought a new record the other day. Really. An actual new vinyl record.

Let me qualify that a little bit. I did not buy a brand new album on vinyl or a record that was pressed this year. I bought an album from 1996. But I got it still in its factory seal and I was the first person to put a needle down on the grooves.

It's been a while since I've bought a new record. Most of the vinyl purchases I've made over the last decade or more have been random finds of used records in various stages of wear and tear. One of the best times I had finding records was a few years ago when I was stopping at antique stores with my wife several years ago, before we got married, on our way through Vermont after I had dragged her to a Wilco show in Burlington.

I tell ya, nothing makes you stop and say "Oh shit, I'm an adult now" like actually going antiquing. Or even using the word "antiquing". It was the price to pay for making her travel hundreds of miles to see a band that I had probably seen just a few days earlier anyway.

While my fiance was looking at furniture pieces at one place I stumbled on a great collection of records. I ended up getting some great albums like Elton John's Madman Across The Water, the first Split Enz album (with a really cool design carved right on the black vinyl), Fleetwood Mac Rumors, a live Warren Zevon, a Jefferson Airplane collection and Lenny Bruce at Carnegie Hall (a triple record!!!).

And picking up some great used treasures is great. But I had forgotten what it was like to get a new record.

I wanted for a long time to get a copy of Robyn Hitchcock's Mossy Liquor, a companion piece to his album Moss Elixir from 1996, one of my top three Robyn albums. He released the limited edition, vinyl only Mossy Liquor with six demo versions of songs from the album (one sung in Swedish) and six other songs unavailable anywhere else. I of course had the regular album on CD because, well , it came out in 1996. But I never got the limited edition vinyl at the time because I was probably broke or whatever other reason. I thought I had missed my chance to get it years ago but I did a quick search on Amazon just to see if any of the secondary sellers had a used copy, and much to my surprise I found a new one.

I probably hadn't opened a new record since I was like seventeen or eighteen, and that would have been a twelve-inch single. The last vinyl album I bought was probably The Unforgettable Fire when I was fifteen.

Man, what a rush. I love getting new CDs and all, opening the case and looking at the booklet and studying the art will make me all giddy when I pick up a new album. But I had forgotten how cool the tactical sensation is when opening a record. A CD has it, but not quite as much. An iPod download obviously doesn't have even a smidgen of that.

Ripping open the record and looking at the big artwork, touching the edge of the vinyl, looking at the shiny grooves that carries your music, giving it a sniff (yes I smelled it). Man, there is not too much better than that. The whole package just brings so much to the music listening experience.

I'm not the Luddite that I'm sometimes accused of being. I mean, I only found this record I've been wanting to find for years because of the Internet. The means by which I collect my live bootlegs (I'm well over 200 shows now), BitTorrent, is probably the most advanced file sharing program that exist today. Hell, I wouldn't even have a live show collection without it. The only live show traders I ever met before the Internet trading started was the Dead Heads in college, and that didn't do me any damn good. So thank god for the Internet helping me become a bootleg geek. And I'm not even saying that I'm going to go back to vinyl, which would be impossible anyway. CDs are a great way to listen to music. Fantastic sound, you get artwork, albeit smaller than it used to be with records, and it is portable.

But getting a new record reminded me of just how precious the whole experience of listening to music is to me. It's why I can't get an iPod. Not having anything to open or the lack of having a cover to look at the first time you sit and listen to an album just doesn't appeal to me. That's without even taking in to account the fact that listening to your music on an iPod makes it sound like you are listening to it on an AM radio. Music is just too important to treat like that. It really is the worst thing to happen to music since the cassette player.

It might have something to do with why records are making something of a comeback. I read the other day that there are more records pressed today than ten years ago. And the sound quality is even better than ever, with 180 gram technology (if you can use that word for vinyl) being all the rage. They also make listening so much more of an active instead of a passive experience.

My main music listening is still going to be in CD form but I think I'll make more of an effort to pick up a special album here and there on vinyl.

Gotta go. Time to flip to side two.