“Records… where to start? My Dad’s collection was on a shelf which ran the length of the living room in the house I grew up in. I have very early memories of flicking through them having absolutely no idea what they were. On the covers were all these incredible looking people, bright colours and weird drawings. They seemed to belong to a different world…”
“On my 16th birthday he left Marquee Moon and Psycho Killer in my room. I went downstairs, put them on the stereo, sat there in front of the speakers and it changed my life.
I’m hyper sensitive, I get goosebumps quite easily, and there’s something about the actual sound of the music that comes from a vinyl record that is closer, clearer, and more personal than any other format. Hearing the intro to “Elevation” on Marquee Moon and then Tom Verlaine’s voice piercing through that warm fuzz of the needle on plastic had my hairs standing on end.
I remember holding the first album I played on. A box of them had been delivered to a gig in London, and we were each given a copy by the label. In the physical pressing of a record onto plastic you transform performances and emotions, words and feelings, into a tangible object that can be held, touched and seen. I think this process is magical, there’s such permanence to it. Once it’s on there, it’s not coming off.
The band and I just played 3 gigs for Record Store Day—two where we live in Margate (Elsewhere and Transmission Records) and one in London (Lion Coffee & Records). There were people queuing up outside each of these shops from 7 o’ clock in the morning. The whole event has come under some scrutiny recently. Some people see the whole thing as a publicity stunt for major labels to sell yet more of their artists’ records. But in my opinion, it’s 2019 and anything that gets people that excited about music has to be a good thing.
I picked up a copy of John Lennon’s Imagine (Raw Studio Takes) LP, and listened to it through a Technics deck and Quad amp the next day. It felt as if we were in the room at Ascot Sound back in the seventies. It was another reminder that no amount of post-production or effects can make up for the purity and emotional gravitas of great playing that’s been recorded well and pressed to plastic.
For a while there it felt like music was destined to spend the rest of its life stuck on a server in Silicon Valley. Look at what’s just happened with MySpace, thousands of songs have been completely lost forever due to some technical error. Hours and hours of peoples’ work, energy, time and love lost due to a technical fuck up.
I remember when MySpace became the best place to get your music heard. Bands were being signed left, right and centre after A&R guys had found them online, sometimes without ever even seeing them play live. The ‘it could be you’ aspect of it was quite exciting—and it felt like a direct retaliation to major labels that had a monopoly on what people listened to.
Back then, MTV2, Kerrang! and Scuzz on TV were the only real go-to’s if you wanted to listen to alternative music, and they belonged to the giants. With the internet, anyone could release a record that could potentially be heard by hundreds of thousands of people.
The downside of the ‘digital revolution’ is that when you buy an mp3, you’re buying a file, a piece of code and not a tangible object. But it does feel like we’re coming to a happy medium. People can listen to music anywhere, whenever they like on their phones or computers, but if they want to go out and support the artists further there are more independent labels, shops, and ways to do that more than ever. People are out buying physical records again and that’s exciting.
In my opinion, nothing can beat the feeling of unwrapping a piece of music, putting it on a record player, reading the sleeve and immersing yourself in sound. Although I’ve played on a few, the EP I’m releasing in May will be my first physical release!
Vive le vinyl!”
—Dan Lyons
Dan Lyons “Special People” EP arrives in stores on May 10, 2019—on vinyl.
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PHOTO: HEDI SLIMANE
TOUR DATES:
2nd May – The Lighthouse, Deal (w/ Robyn Hitchcock)
9th May – The Great Escape, Brighton
10th May – The Windmill, Brixton
14th May – Favela Chic, Paris
18th May – Elsewhere, Margate
