“My first memories of vinyl are of my parents’ collection, stubbornly holding space in the living room…the same way the shadow of my CD collection sits today, just kinda waiting around to die. By the ’80s, cassette was king.”
“My cassettes were my first treasures. A plastic Tupperware sleeve housed the dozen or so I’d managed to accumulate by age 10. I pored over liner notes on palm sized flaps, respectfully letting Side A and B have their say. Sloppily pirating songs from FM radio made me a curator of my own album experience. The blank cassette is where MP3 playlist culture and LP culture meet on the Venn diagram.
My love and appreciation for vinyl began in my early 20s. I noticed a lot of bands I liked, bands that didn’t sell many records, were putting out LPs. How was this technological leap backwards justified? Was it irony? Is the emperor wearing any clothes?? I had to know.
I bought a record player and some used vinyl from Amoeba, went home, and nothing was ever the same. I had an epiphany about the quality of, and attention I’d been paying to, the music I was consuming. It sounded fat (and I liked that). I reconnected with the hands-on experience I’d had with cassettes as a kid holding the gatefold and letting a song (even one I that I didn’t really like) play out.
I love that the ritual of playing an LP facilitates conversation. It’s a decisive choice at a party: flip the circle and get back to gabbin’. The opposite of an ADD youtube “DJ-off” where everyone is obsessively considering their next choice. In these situations we stop being present, confident that everyone is going to be blown away by that sick remix and animation video and *yawn* “is it 4:00am already?!” I propose that we let folks like Fleetwood Mac tell us how the next 49 minutes of our lives should sound. They did a bunch of blow and argued internally about track lists so we wouldn’t have to! Trust them. It was literally their only job.
In lieu of children my collection has expanded, reminiscent of rings on a tree. I can see the year that I was heavy into ’80s Dub, King Tubby, The Upsetter…I see my Skeeter Davis/Glen Campbell country vocal phase…all of my guilty pleasures on display in my living room. Half biography, half indictment. My collecting doesn’t seem to be slowing down, though my choices are a little more incisive these days. If I was a multi-thousandaire, would I buy up Drag City’s entire catalog? Probably.
I am sincerely overwhelmed with pride when I see a record I’ve been a part of at an independent record store stacked next to the other Luddites. My records are my only possessions I’ve ever thought would be nice to pass down, but they’d probably only become someone’s burden. Maybe they’d end up at a Goodwill in 40 years and some kid’s like, “67/500.. must be SHIT…” With that in mind, when I die, please bury all of my records with me. I’ll take them into the next life like a hipster Pharaoh, the same way I’ve lugged them around LA the better part of a decade.
Let this article also serve as a formal request. That’s a 2-fer, and that means lunch!
Records Rule, Streaming Drools. Vote Quimby!”
—Jutty Taylor
Greyface’s full length release Greyola is in stores now.
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