I recently bought a cheap turntable, two, maybe three months ago. Even though it’s a bit tinny, it is awesome to me - the process of picking the records, going through the stacks, the artwork, holding the piece of work in your hands, placing the disc, flipping and placing again, with care; treating the album with care, yes, it’s art, something to be treasured.
Is it merely nostalgia for days past? Perhaps. But Traffic’s version of Medicated Goo from Welcome to the Canteen isn’t avail on itunes. I’m listening to it now, found it at a flea market last month for 5. The prices are pretty sweet where I shop - I get plenty of albums under 5, some good ones even at 2; the most I’ve spent was 24 for Sandanista.
I just hope that I don’t become Shrevie.
I own an outrageously expensive turntable that a friend of mine simply gave to me when he abandoned his vinyl collection back in the late 80s. The turntable still works perfectly and my vinyl collection has grown steadily over the past decades.
Vinyl is a more sensual experience than digital recordings are, and the preparations to listen to one of them put you in the right state of mind to enjoy the music thoroughly; it’s a bit like the tea ceremony.
Sure, vinyl never sounds as perfect as digital but I can still listen to records that were released in the 50s or 60s, while some of my older Cd from the 80s and more of the much younger ones are not playable any longer.
And I think the comparatively fast decay of digital media has become one major reason for my reawakened interest in older or other ways to secure our creations: so much is in danger of being lost forever.
Future archeologists might not find much information about those couple of decades when first magnetic tape and then digital recording were already invented by sturdy media weren’t.
Of course, even durable media won’t help much as long as the coding changes as quickly as it did in the past decades; a lot of still fine magnetic tape from the 60s and 70s (used in research) isn’t readable because no device exists any longer that could do it.
Anyway, while I am glad that tiny media players exist that give me access to hundreds of hours of music and hours of film in the middle of a rain forest, I still love to sit down quietly to a spinning record back home.