Growing up with two parents whom one might describe as “music junkies” was a treat…usually.
My parents weren’t musicians but based on their extensive vinyl collection they were certainly music aficionados and obsessive about spinning vinyl. Often I would come home and my parents would be singing at the top of their lungs or dancing in the living room listening to one of their favorite records. My dad would always stop me and say, “Alyssa, come here, listen to this… wait for it…” and then inevitably, he would sing over the part he wanted me to listen to anyway.
But, the record player never stopped spinning in my house. To a little girl the towering cabinets of vinyl in the main family room were like the candy store window display. There were different flavors, different pretty wrappings and certainly different surprises within each 12 X 12 package.
I used to sit on the floor and surround myself with vinyl. So many beautiful covers and lush sounds. I would pull one out from the hundreds in a cabinet I could reach and put it on the record player very carefully, like my dad taught me, and be whisked away by The Beatles or Joan Baez by Antonio Carlos Jobim or Frank Sinatra by the Soundtrack to Hair or by Bob Dylan. I loved that raw tactile sensation of lifting the diamond needle and ever so gently placing it on the spinning dream. The crackle, the mood, the lifelike experience of standing in the room with these wonderful performers. Vinyl is the sound I grew up with.
Recently, Doug and I have reconnected with our passion for vinyl. We bought a small used turntable from the Lower East Side and we searched through our individual collections and of course found we had lots of duplicates. We did grow up together and share musical influences so that wasn’t a surprise. Some of our favorites, Neil Young’s “On The Beach,” The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds,” The Kinks “Greatest Hits,” Carole King’s “Tapestry,” Nick Drake’s “Five Leaves Left,” The Velvet Underground’s “The Velvet Underground & Nico,” and of course The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Now that we have a record player in the house and the beginnings of a real vinyl collection, we’ve turned into my parents! We have vinyl spinning all the time, we sing at the top of our lungs, we dance and we continuously try to fill that “sugar” jones.
Alyssa Graham – Watching The Sky
Some of our most romantic nights now are spent record hunting in NYC, where we live. We’ll go grab something to eat in the East Village, get a great cup of coffee at Abraco Espresso and then hit Good Records or Academy LP’s. If we’re really hot on the trail we’ll head over to Williamsburg to Junk or Academy Annex. Some of the most recent additions to our collection: Harry Belafonte’s 1956 “Calypso” and Patti Smith’s 1975 “Horses.”
Hopefully, the next vinyl addition will be our own, “Lock, Stock & Soul.”
