“I was recently shown a photograph which captured one of my earliest encounters with vinyl. It shows a large old brown suitcase opened flat on a living room floor. In one half there’s me as a two-year old, and in the other are dozens of 7” records jammed together. Some handwritten alphabetic labels poke between the discs which belonged to my dad in his younger days when he ran a mobile disco. A record sleeve rests in my lap, and I’m looking across grinning at the rows of records in front of me.”
“From that point it might have been reasonable to conclude that my future as a bona fide crate digger had been cemented, though it never quite turned out like that. My passion for music has always been equalled by my interest in technology, and so as every new gadget came along – Walkman, Discman, MiniDisc player and MP3 player – I would migrate my collection from one format to another.
Despite that, as a teenager I would often spend Saturdays at my local record store trying to build up my vinyl single collection. When a CD single was £3.99, spending the same (or often less) on a beautifully packed piece of limited edition vinyl was really a no brainer. Particular highlights from those days included Garbage’s “Stupid Girl” in a lovely blue cloth case, and a glorious piece of coloured vinyl for “Dune Buggy” by The Presidents of the United States of America.
As I’ve spent my adult life moving around a bit, I have often leant on the convenience of digital formats. When you’re living in a small room in a flat share in London, a vast collection of records isn’t really an option.
Still, I do find myself returning to vinyl and other physical formats. There are some very smart websites which help you discover fantastic music, but I haven’t found anything which replaces the experience of trawling record stores and second-hand shops in order to reveal new records.
My appreciation of Frankie Goes to Hollywood remixes would have never come about without visits to car boot sales. I even recently bought an old 1928 HMV gramophone which enables me to play some older discs that I’ve been picking up in charity shops. My latest haul brought home some 1940s Russian piano recordings, and Louis Armstrong’s “New Orleans Funeral March.” It’s been a fascinating extra dimension to my musical education!
To be honest, I was very much in two minds when we came to discuss release formats for the Flutes record. Do we really need a vinyl release in 2013? Kudos to Godfrey (our singer) for pushing the vinyl agenda, because when the final gatefold product came back from the manufacturer we couldn’t have been happier. It’s the perfect presentation for the collection of those songs. And as much as I love my Spotify account dearly, no one has yet made an app that replicates the touch of a record sleeve and the shimmer of vinyl.”
—Rob Marshall, Guitars
