“For me, when I started listening to vinyl was when I started getting into classic rock, bands like Pink Floyd and The Beatles, artists like Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young. Of those though, Pink Floyd has had the biggest influence on me and there are few records that are made for vinyl like Dark Side of the Moon.“
“Love it or hate it, that record reflects what I appreciate most about playing vinyl, that it forces you to envelop an album, to be a part of the experience. I also love when an album (like that one) closes the a-side with an extremely heavy and cathartic piece. Flipping the record is like a small intermission to the full performance, and starting the b-side with the “hit” is a great use of tension and release.
And of course there’s the sound of vinyl, the warm crackle, the physicality of it all that gives a certain power and tangible truth to a great recording. Certain types of music just sound amazing on wax. When I was 17 I started getting serious about being a jazz bass player and went to a 5 week summer music program at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
As one can imagine in the year 2000 there were a ton of record stores around the college and that summer I began entering the jazz world through vinyl. Collecting records with Paul Chambers on bass was a top priority for me, and from that direction it was easy to get turned on to legendary artists like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Bill Evans. I mean, there are few things more powerful than listening to John Coltrane play, but on vinyl it just enters a whole new level!
As far as going to record stores, I’m pretty sure that buying vinyl is the only actual process of shopping that I enjoy! I’ve gone on a few tours up and down the west coast and there’s something exciting about the sense of discovery that can be attained by entering a new town and finding out where the good stores are.
I remember in my late teens when my older brother moved to Portland, Oregon I got to visit the city for the first time and entered Jackpot Records, which I think looking back was the first “cool” record store that I ever entered. I spent so much time there at the listening station, hearing kinds of music I didn’t even know existed. Living in San Francisco, I definitely check out Amoeba from time to time but I think my favorite record store is Groove Merchant Records on Haight Street. I’m a huge fan of soul, funk and jazz and that little store focuses on that niche in the best possible way!
These days it’s been great to see the resurgence of vinyl in the digital age and I think it makes perfect sense that we have a fresh desire to absorb music again in its true physical form. I felt this sense of the vinyl revival this past Christmas when I got my 16 year old niece her first record player. It actually wasn’t my idea, I had heard she wanted one and was honestly surprised that she was so interested.
A few days after Christmas we got the record player out and I showed her how it worked. I feel like she’d never seen one before in person and the wonderment that she had was incredibly contagious, bringing me back to my first time letting that needle hit the record. It was like one of those over-dramatic “passing the torch” kind of moments, and being the musician in the family, I was more than happy to have a part in that experience.”
—Jesse Cafiero
Split Screens’ debut 7″ vinyl release arrives today, March 18, via Bay Area label Name Drop Swamp Records. The vinyl release show is Saturday, March 22 at Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco, CA.
