“My first experience with vinyl was as a young kid growing up in New Jersey. My parents had this record player in the living room that they would play all the time. My father was particularly into jazz, easy listening, and other popular music from the 1950s and ’60s. Artists like Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Dean Martin we’re always spinning on this record player. This might explain why this music grew on me later in life.”
“My mother, on the other hand, was from Poland. Her musical taste was all over the place. She loved Fleetwood Mac and Abba; she used to teach herself how to speak English by learning the words to the songs! She owned a lot of their music on vinyl as well as a ton of other stuff ranging from disco polo (a popular genre of dance music originating in Poland) to traditional American holiday music towards the end of the year. We got a lot of use out of that record player in my house for sure.
Fast forward to my early 20s and a long time since I had operated a record player, I found myself caught up in a huge Phish phase. The second time I saw them live at Randall’s Island in New York City, I wound up buying their album A Picture of Nectar on vinyl…with no way to play it…because I didn’t own and hadn’t owned a record player in years. I feel like this helped me to appreciate vinyl the way I do today though. By the time I got my hands on my own record player and listened to the album, it felt like I was hearing it for the first time again. The music had this warm and crispy yet delicate essence to it that filled the room in a way that brought me back to my parents’ house as a kid.
That was when my real relationship with vinyl began; I basically forced myself to buy a record player by buying one of my favorite albums first. I loved them ever since. There’s something special about vinyl. You can stream music, listen in your car or in your headphones, but nothing compares to that authentic hiss of a spinning record. When that needle drops, you’re in for a very different musical experience.
Nowadays, it doesn’t matter if I’ve heard an album 1,000 times or never at all. Sometimes buying something on vinyl that I’ve already heard is just as exciting for me as finding something new. It hits differently when you sit down and listen to the story from beginning to end without the luxury of easily skipping past some tunes. I’ve been loving how vinyl has made such a huge comeback over the years. It would be a dream come true to hear my own band’s music one day through a record player!”
—Mike Diggs
“Celebrity Suicide,” the new single from The Gutter Daisies is in stores now.
