“One of my favourite experiences with vinyl came when I was about 10 or 11. Like most kids growing up in the early ’90s, the first music that I discovered were grunge albums like Nevermind and Superunknown. As a young music fan, I loved Cornell and Cobain and had no reason to doubt their position as the greatest rock and roll musicians of all time.”
“My dad, had a box in his closest, sitting underneath his dress shirts and beside his shoes. Packed away with his chess board, beta tape player (he still insists its better than VHS) and Atari, was a box filled with five or six of his favorite records—Peter Gabriel’s So, the Beatles’ Abbey Road, Led Zeppelin II, and a couple that I still have never heard of.
Given where he kept his records, it should be obvious that he wasn’t the biggest music fan. It was up to me to discover them for myself. For no reason in particular, the record I chose was Led Zeppelin II. My aunt was the only person I knew with a working turntable, so I took my dad’s copy of Led Zeppelin II to her apartment. I set up shop and lay sprawled out on the floor with the jacket open, asking my aunt to begin with side two first.
I couldn’t tell you how the sonic qualities of the record changed listening to vinyl. I could tell that the experience of lying on the rug beside her two PSB tower speakers, watching the record turn, sleeve spread open like a coffee table book, made for a much more romantic experience than popping my CD copy of Ten inside a boombox.
The musical experience of listening to that Zeppelin vinyl was a revelation. They say all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, and hearing Zeppelin for the first time was an education that powerful drums and crunchy guitars weren’t invented in 1991. I couldn’t believe a song as heavy as “Bring it On Home” existed for 21 years without my knowing about it. Hearing that my favorite musicians were as much inspired by those who came before them as they were innovators themselves was a seismic shift in the way I understood music.
That Led Zeppelin vinyl taught me that something I love about music—anytime you hear something cool, something interesting, or something “new,” there is a whole world of art that inspired it. Music that you ultimately might think is even cooler.”
—Nick Dika, bass
Arkells’ full-length, High Noon is in stores now. On vinyl.
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