“A meditation on vinyl. (I attempted to condense the memoir, but thinking about vinyl opened some weird floodgates…)
Earliest memories: At home, Dad had a record player but no records. It came with a purple velvet-y record cleaner that me and my siblings liked to play with. We mostly listened to classical radio and dusted furniture with the velvet thing.
Around five, I started taking piano lessons with Ms. Emeline Clawson, a lady in her seventies who had amazing veins crawling the tops of her hands, a cat named Allegro, the complete cloth-bound works of Louisa May Alcott, two grand pianos in her living room, and most of her furniture covered in clear vinyl. We’d take breaks to drink cold o.j. and listen to records of Glenn Gould or Arthur Rubenstein or Vladimir Horowitz. For the longest time, I thought records were for classical music and for folks born around the turn of the century.
Eagle and Talon | In Manila
Wrong on so many fronts. And who knew vinyl would make such a comeback? It makes sense. I guess “the digital revolution” made people realize that analog things are quite nice too. Maybe if we hadn’t dumped all our CD’s into Caselogic holders and lost the jewel cases, CD’s would still feel like art objects. But as it stands, they just feel a little bit small. Records on the other hand, hit the spot. They crackle, they pleasantly disrupt the flow of dinner parties, and they’ve got scale on their side.
I didn’t realize what I was missing until Kim got me a record player for my bday about five years ago (her first internet purchase ever!) It was a simple turquoise plastic Panasonic unit that played tapes and records, and came with a Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd Jazz Samba record. It was a revelation. I mean the internet is incredible too but a little bit too crazy to really comprehend. Whereas watching that small needle pull music out of a piece of vinyl is a more tangible miracle. Friction and electronics. No bitrates, no lazers!
These days I have a small collection of pretty un-up-to-date records. Lots of Sinatra, also Billy Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Dionne Warwick, Dolly Parton, Joe Cocker, Sam Cooke, Cindi Lauper, the Pointer Sisters, etc… mostly purchased at thrift stores while scavenging for pretty kitchenware. The LP’s aren’t pristine, but they sound warm and good even with one of my speakers being blown out. Mixed in are a couple more recent albums—Sufjian Stevens, Bon Iver, Micachu—but I mostly stick to what I find when I’m looking for dinner platters and things. It makes listening to music more about taking your time and discovering random amazing stuff from past eras rather than scrambling to keep up with everything that’s exploding into the world just now. It keeps things simple and surprising, which feels nice and right for the time being.” —ALICE
“My earliest vinyl memories are covered in confetti and gold dust.
They took place in two locations—the gothic style unused “dining room” of my family’s house in Winnipeg and down the street in the basement of Jeremy and Jeanine’s house. J and J were the blonde, waspy versions of my brother and I, they loved stickers and airplanes. They lived in an old house and their basement (which I recollect as being medieval themed) was covered in blood red shaggy carpet.
The one record that most kids in Winnipeg had in common was “The Mini-Pops.” I thought they were the best band in the world. To me it wasn’t even sound or music, it was simply magic. I had never heard so many good songs all in one place in my whole life. I was six. They wrote incredible songs like, “Brown Girl in the Ring,” “Stupid Cupid,” and “My Boy Lollipop.” Then, one day I heard one of their songs (“Abracadabra”) on the radio, and everything shattered. I found out that it was The Eurythmics performing the song, not the Mini-Pops! In confusion and sadness I realized the only “band” I had grown to love so deeply was just a bunch of impostors. It turns out the Mini-Pops were a group of kids thrown together by adults, singing songs they didn’t even write. After further investigation I discovered these songs I loved so much were actually made famous by artists like Madness, Connie Francis, Boney M and Blondie.
Soon after my mind melting discovery I decided to stop listening to records my parents bought me, I didn’t want to have anything to do with records designed for children. I delved into their adult collection mostly made up of classical music, disco compilations, and pop stars like Stevie Wonder and Linda Rondstadt. It wasn’t until I was 13 that I re-discovered the same kind of love I felt for the Mini-pops. I found my parents old Simon & Garfunkel records and they were the perfect soundtrack to the incense and candles phase I was going through. My faux-hippy period had finally found the perfect soundtrack, and was only further embellished by my decided permanent costume change… I started to exclusively wear my Mom’s Lithuanian clothes from the 60’s and her Canadian clothes from the 70’s. Coincidentally all of my girlfriends were going through the same phase. The best part was that my best friend Joanna who lived down the street also had parents with similar music taste, and she had even more Simon & Garfunkel records than I. She had “Bookends” which had “Hazy Shade of the Winter” on it. It was the perfect song for us as it was usually -20C below freezing out and there was no where else to really go besides our teenage bedrooms turned ashrams.
After being swept up by tapes and CD’s, I re-discovered my love for vinyl in my twenties.
After moving to Los Angeles I convinced a guy at a yard sale to sell me his gigantic juke-box style, 70’s record player for twenty dollars. It was adorned with dark wood paneling, had a bonus 8-track player tape deck in it, and played 6 records at a time. I started listening to a lot of Brazilian jazz on it and my love for old Broadway musicals found a place to bloom through this beautiful invention. It still sits and shines in my living room in Silverlake, and being my favorite mode in which to listen to music, I will never abandon vinyl again.” —Kim
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