Jan
08
2012

Vinyl Advice

(Add / View Comments) (0)Sunday, January 8, 2012 - 07:52:40 pm
(Posted Under: Music Music, Instagram Instagram)
Instagram ImageIt's been a fun weekend for vinyl. Starting out at Zia Records in Chandler yesterday, where I picked up a bunch more of Poison singles. Nice.


That pit stop, after seeing the Muppets movie reminded me that I'd been wanting to go down and check out the Ghost Of Eastside Records. We had gone down to Eastside right before it closed in 2010. It seemed like an appropriate thing to do, if for nothing else, to go in once before it closed. The visit pretty much amounted to that, but it was a cool thing to do. However, today's visit was much more thought out, and hence more profitable. we picked up a bunch of good records for Tucson, as well as some other cool "to have" old stuff.

The vinyl weekend was rounded out with finally putting this vinyl on the wall. Now that feels good. Most of it had been framed 2 years ago, with the Dead Hot posters being all that actually made it to the wall back then. Getting the rest up on the wall which has otherwise laid bare has been a dangling to do item until tonight. Snagging another copy of Dusted does provide a fair bit of motivation.

Growing up, I was far from a vinyl buff. Which has more to do with when I was growing up, more than anything else. Sure, there was vinyl in the house, and I had a limited amount of my own. But, when I was old enough to own a music player, the initiation was into the world of cassette, not vinyl. It's odd to look back on, but I was the first one in the household (and for many years, the only one) to have a cassette player. So I really skipped the whole vinyl thing. And that worked fine for me. Once simply playing The Who's Greatest Hits over and over became a little less engaging, I was on to blank cassettes and recording stuff of the radio. Making my own tapes. Something that I would have never been able to do with vinyl. So my introduction to the music world was no doubt the right one for me.

It did mean that I completely skipped ever owning a turntable. Exactly 10 years after my first (of many) cassette player, I graduated to Compact Disc. After years of tape degradation, and copious amounts of time untangling cassette tapes from the players that had gotten hungry and fancied them as something to eat, CD's were a welcomed change in format. And although by that point in my life I had gotten it down to an art, no longer having to fast forward/rewind to get to a song was a convenience not lost on me. Not to mention the convenience of not having to fast forward and rewind to find a song. While I'd really cut my teeth on cassettes, CD's were revolutionary, and is where my music collection expanded drastically.

And I never really looked back. As much as an audiophile I am, I've never subscribed to the "vinyl sounds better" thing. I'm not saying that it doesn't. But in my mind, with pops, crackles and signal to noise ratios, as well as the precise reproduction factor, it's hard to go past the digital audio format. It's a personal preference, and CD has always been mine.

However, literally having had my hands on quite a bit of vinyl this weekend, it's impossible to deny that the format is something special. I've always loved the compactness of Compact Discs for practical reasons. But when you hold a 12" record of an album you have on CD, it's a completely different experience. When you're holding the vinyl version, you're holding something significant. Something that has weight. Something that is grandiose. As dirty as I might feel saying it, in that way, a Compact Disc just can't compete with that.

In short: the drinks are cheap, and vinyl is indeed cool.

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