“I remember the puffing sound of the needle touching down onto the vinyl. How the built in speakers crackled before the first tune started, and how that rustling sound kept going, discretely in the background throughout the record. Growing up, I could spend hours laying flat on my back, listening through my Dad’s vinyl collection.”
“For as long as I can recall we’ve had a record player and a record collection in our house. My Dad has a great music interest, and I still have very vivid memories of him sitting on the living room floor, wearing his big ass AKG headphones, and holding an LP cover in his hand, following the lyrics to whatever song he was listening to.
I remember one night, perhaps I was five or six, and the entire family was having myskväll. Myskväll is Swedish and means “cozy night.” (Myskväll is an institution in Sweden. EVERY Friday families gather on their couches for dinner, snacks, TV, and board games to enjoy a cozy night.) This specific evening, after dinner, my Dad walked over to the record player and popped on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. He pulled out the off-white AKGs, put them over my ears and said: “Listen, Elin. This is what REAL music sounds like. This is rock ‘n roll.” The tune was “Like a Rolling Stone,” and ever since that night, Mr. Bob Dylan has been a big inspiration to me.
Now I’m 30 years old, and of course I own a record player. I still love the LP format. The warm, crackling sound, the record spinning round and round, how you manually have to flip it over, and how the artwork looks so much better than on a CD.
I’m following in my father’s footsteps—I often sneak off into the living room, grab a record, and listen to it in my headphones while reading the lyrics. And I’m pretty sure that one fine day, I’ll put these very headphones over my future children’s ears and say:
‘Listen kiddo, this is what REAL music sounds like. This is rock ‘n roll'”
—Elin Ruth
Elin Ruth’s “Bang” EP is released tomorrow, 11/27, and January 2013 will see the release of Elin Ruth’s self titled LP, both via Divers Avenue Music.
