“The last record I bought was Les Rita Mitsouko’s first album, a Japanese version, that I found when I was in Beijing! And, yes I may be trying to show off a little there, but I feel like that’s just a perfect example of the joy and magic that comes along with the physicality of vinyl, something to keep and treasure. I may have only listened to the actual record once, but I’ve gotten so much more into that album because of the association with it. It has a life in memory, and whenever I listen to it online, I’m right back there in that hip record store in China with my brother.”
“I first started digging into vinyl around 13, through my dad’s little collection that he still had after having ditched most of them for the epic and now sadly irrelevant evolution of the Compact Disc. I was moving out of a brief, angsty Neo-Metal phase and deeply into ‘Classic Rock,’ and his collection gave me JJ Cale, Mills Brothers, and Fleetwood Mac. Then the 50 cent bins at Rainy Day Records in Olympia become a fantastic friend for getting all those old ubiquitous staples, and the beautiful fold out Yes records that I would try so hard to appreciate while doing homework in my room (since then I’ve learned I don’t think I need the 20 minute version of ‘Long Distance Runaround,’ sorry to those hard core prog rock appreciators out there).
I think I’ve been in possession of 6 record players throughout my life, 5 of which never seemed to work! And now whenever I visit a friend’s home I see these cute little fake cherry wood boxes with built in little speakers, that have a turntable, a CD player, and a cassette player. And 93% of the time they have an aux cable coming out of them that they plug their phones or computers into. It’s funny yet not surprising that we long for that vintage element without actually using the vintage sources that they were designed to utilize. Hard not to fall victim too, as most likely, all those 5 non-functional turntables I had just needed a new needle!
Isn’t ‘turntable’ just such a good name for a sound player!? It’s not even creative, it’s just a literal description of what’s required to make a record make sound! ‘Streaming,’ that sounds pretty nice actually, but it’s bulllllllshit! Try plugging Pro Tools, or Logic, or a tape machine direct into a small flowing body of water…actually please do and tell me what happens, might make for a brilliant pretentious art piece, if you film it, with the right lighting. Why don’t CDs have a sexy term for their means of translation into sound? Set it on that little tray, press a button, watch it disappear, then listen to it.
There’s nothing exotic about ‘6 CD changer’ or a fucking cassette with a 1/8th inch cable sticking out of it. The ‘Boombox,’ the ‘Walkman,’ so the original mobile cassette players had a chance, groundbreaking in their time, titled with comparable attraction to the ‘turntable,’ but they were the rudimentary beginning of our shift to convenience over romance, specifically in terms of how we relate to music. History seems to prove it inarguable that convenience always wins the war, but romance will never accept it.”
—Jake McCaffray
“Flesh” is taken from Fruit Juice’s debut full length release Eat You Up which is in stores now—on vinyl.
