“My own memory of vinyl is just it being there because my mum had so much of it. I remember getting singles on vinyl such as “T.U.R.T.L.E Power” by Partners In Kryme (still have it) as well some stuff by Paula Abdul and Madonna. I was tiny and happy.”
“When I was 10, my Uncle died, who was a big character in our family and one who was very musical. We inherited most of his records and there was so much. As I got older and more curious about wanting to know who he was outside of my fading memory, I used to play the records almost as if to see if he was there inside them. That sounds cheesy and sentimental but it meant that I discovered people like Buddy Holly, Marty Robbins, Ben E. King, along with Fats Domino and all these wonderful songs. There was so much in there.
As my brother and I both progressed into our teens, my older brother became a huge Guns ‘n’ Roses fan (he saw the first leg of the Use Your Illusion tour at Maine Road while Izzy Stradlin was still in the band!) and I remember my mum and me going to Castle Records in Darwen to buy him a copy of Skid Row’s Monkey Business. It was a 12” single and the cover had this picture of a gorilla with a crow-bar in its hand. It was fantastic and it made me laugh for days. We also bought him Hey Stoopid by Alice Cooper. However, being at opposite ends of puberty, I followed my nose towards my mum’s Beatles’ collection, which is where my love for songs really kicked off…
The sheer size of vinyl was something that was in some ways great because it meant that you could really take in all the artwork, but once CDs came along then I didn’t really miss it ‘cos it could also be a massive pain in the arse—but then nostalgia is a much bigger pain the arse. I do think that vinyl, tapes, CDs are all representative of a time when people felt much more of a physical ownership over their music, as well as being of a time when albums were a work as a whole rather than the latest collection of songs.
However, I think the curse of our generation has been to eulogize vinyl along with everything else from the early days of pop culture in a general retrospection that’s brought about what seems like this crippling nostalgia in so much of modern music. History should be about inspiring the living. Pretending its 1966, ’77 or ’84 or whenever happens to be flavour of the month isn’t going to move things forward and I’m fairly sure The Beatles didn’t go into making Revolver wishing that it was 1926 and saying to themselves, “fuck me, this studio would sound so much warmer if it hadn’t been invented yet…”
It also seems to smack of ducking out of the responsibility in making new music, in that it captures the moment that you’re in—as opposed to the moment you wish you’d been in. I appreciate artistic license and imagination, but nostalgia, in general, doesn’t lend itself to either, it just seems more like a head-sized bucket of sand. Vinyl is great if that’s your thing, same as if train-spotting or collecting stamps or football programmes is your thing, but if it then becomes confused with the idea that you’re somehow more deeply connected to or more serious about music than someone who’s record collection is entirely digital, then that shit is whack, as it were.”
—Al Smith
“I had a similar experience with vinyl growing up, in that my parents had a decent record collection, which would become hugely influential on my own tastes.”
“My dad had a keen hunger for car-boot-sale bargains which is where a lot of their collection had probably come from, but as a result some records were in terrible shape. Some it’d just be the cover was tatty or falling apart; others the disc itself would be scratched, so that songs would skip in a particular place every time; then some discs would be warped, which meant that they’d speed up and slow down and it sounded pretty weird. As a kid that warped record sound was quite a fun sort of novelty, but ultimately it became frustrating not being able to listen to the music as intended.
They had a real range of stuff from Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry to The Beatles, folky stuff like Incredible String Band and Steel Eye Span, ’70s prog like Pink Floyd and harder rock like Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy, a couple of those Motown chartbusters collections, reggae compilations, cheesy pop compilations, Indian sitar music, the odd jazz singer like Dionne Warwick, there was even a Talking Heads double live album in there which in hindsight must’ve been pretty cutting edge at the time.
It provided a really good foundation for exploring and developing my own tastes growing up, although really I started out with cassette tapes, which my parents also had in plentiful supply. I guess because they were friendlier for small hands, they were just easier for me to stick on myself from a younger age and they also had the huge advantage of portability.
By the age of 5 I had become obsessed with David Bowie’s Space Oddity on cassette and my first strong memory of choosing a record to put on (I think I still got my parents to do it) was when I discovered Scary Monsters in the vinyl collection. I remember seeing the artwork and how Bowie (who actually was Major Tom in my mind) looked very weird and interesting. It really fired my imagination and probably intensified my reaction to the music a little too much, it sounded other worldly and I think must’ve genuinely scared me because I don’t remember putting it on again until I was well into my teens.
Again it was the size of vinyl records that, whilst making them a hindrance in some ways, also made them more of a presence, especially because of the artwork. It could draw you to certain records, somehow make them more appealing and you could spend an entire side just staring at it whilst listening. Of course, some of the artwork was just crap, like a cheesy photo! I also used to be fascinated by the groove in the record, and I remember just staring, watching the needle gradually work its way along the spiral from the edge to the middle. I loved how our player would then automatically move the arm up and back to the rest position too.
Like Al says, I guess it’s that physical connection that keeps people coming back to buying vinyl despite its flaws, and means that new material still gets released on the format. From the point of view of a band with no budget however, vinyl unfortunately just isn’t a viable option and Mp3s are, with CDs, a happy sort of middle ground.”
—Simon Nicholson
“Caribesque” is available digitally and India Mill’s debut album, Under Every Sky will be released November 24th this year.
