“When I was born my mom and I lived with my aunt and my cousin. We didn’t have much, so our record player got a ton of play.”
“Some of my earliest memories are of the albums we listened to. I remember my cousin playing Neil Young for me, and us rocking out at the ripe ages of 1 and 3. I remember singing along to REO Speedwagon’s “Take It On The Run” over and over, running around the house. We sang along to the soundtrack of the animated film Pete’s Dragon and Peter Paul and Mary’s Peter Paul and Mommy. These memories are certainly some of my oldest and happiest. This is a huge part of my love for the record. And though I listened to them in my teens and 20s, it wasn’t till recently that I really fell in love with them again.
I bought a portable player about ten years ago and started collecting vinyl. My mother-in-law gave us a bunch of their old records, including some that my wife used to sing along to as a wee one. When we were home with our baby boy shortly after his birth, we started to play them for him. I remember one day in particular when he was a little under the weather and upset. I took him over to the record player and put on Ravel’s Bolero. After initially being a little scared, he stared at the player for the whole piece and at the end reached for the record and asked for more.
After that we sat in living room almost every day listening to James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms, one of my wife’s favorite Sesame Street albums and Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding to name a few. When he would get upset or need something to keep him busy, we played him records. Now we get up in the morning and before we make coffee or even go to the bathroom, a record is spinning.
I watch him staring up and try to get him to sing along. It takes me back to the days when I was first wrapping my ear around those 33s. It’s an incredible thing to see him taking in the music, dancing around, listening to some of the same records that we listened to as toddlers. I hope that they are around for his kids.
There’s another side to my affinity for the record. It’s the physicality of it. It’s a big, perfectly round piece of vinyl with little bits of magic cut into it. A collection of songs that you can actually feel and see. The album art is always huge and beautiful. The sound is so incredible, full of moments, both musical and accidental.. bumps, scratches and of course that nostalgic midrange. You can almost see it traveling up through the needle, into the arm, and out the speaker.
But most of all, there’s no fast forward or skipping tunes. Just side one and side two. You are much more likely to listen to the tracks that you might normally be tempted to skip. And just like so many things in life, it’s the unsuspecting ones that you learn to love the most.”
—Daniel Forsyth
Driftwood’s new album, City Lights arrives in stores on November 3. Pre-orders are here.
