“My love affair started with vinyl maybe 5 or so years ago. A really good friend of mine had an obsession for it and hence pushed it onto me. It’s not an elitist thing at all, it’s more the authenticity.”
“Everything from the sleeve and packaging to the tangible value it holds, and of course the overall sound. You can get pretty turbo on the idealistic set up too, looking into power amps, speakers, and turntables is a whole other bag of fun.
My favourite two personal stories pertaining to vinyl are completely different, but both pretty cool so I’m telling you both.
Big Star, Third | The same buddy who got me into hunting down records, got me into Big Star. I became mildly obsessive for a few months there, and I can vividly remember the first time I put this album on. I had just finished work for the day, it sucked. Really shitty day. I arrived home to find a package at my stoop, it was this album. I hastily unwrapped the packaging and immediately placed it on.
I can remember lying back on the shag rug, lucidly falling in and out of sleep as the songs intertwined and I actually had this pseudo feeling of being on heroin. It’s really weird to explain and perhaps you can’t really ascertain the exact feeling I am explaining, but I was incapacitated on this rug in my living room. No one around and just the sound of Big Star emanating over me. It was euphoric in a way and for some reason I don’t think I would have shared that same experience if I had been listening to an iPod.
Tom Petty, Wildflowers | I absolutely love this album. Tom Petty is a genius at writing sweet and simple pop songs and this album is awash with them. “Wildflowers,” “You Wreck Me,” “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” “Crawling Back To You,” and more.
Anyway, it was released in 1994, that was a year where CDs were booming off their tits. Vinyl as far as I know it was very limitedly pressed, if at all. I looked everywhere for this on vinyl. I couldn’t for the life of me get an answer or find anything that gave me hope of getting my mitts on it—I had pretty much given up.
That was until my 30th birthday last year, my dear friend Tom Stefanovic had heard me asking for it at a record fair a year earlier and devoted his time to finding me a copy—completely unbeknownst to me. He handed it to me and watched with intent as I unwrapped what I thought was going to be something completely different. My jaw dropped. I could not believe that the had found it.
That was a pretty cool moment for me.”
—Monte, bass
The Delta Riggs’ single “The Record’s Flawed” is available now and their sophomore LP Dipz Zebazios lands in stores in 2015. The Delta Riggs play Culture Collide LA and SF (10/15 and 10/18) and CMJ in NYC (10/23 and 10/25).
