“My first memories of vinyl are listening to my dad’s Simon and Garfunkel and Beatles records. Those were always playing in my house as a kid. I also remember poking in the dust caps of my dad’s speakers. Incidentally, my 2 year old daughter just returned the favor this month. I’ve had that coming for 30 years.”
“To be honest, I only recently was turned back on to vinyl. I appreciate the sonic differences for sure, but I’ve always chosen the convenience of using my phone over sonics. That said, six months ago, during the darkest and scariest time of our life, my wife and I decided to install a record player center-stage in our living room and start collecting vinyl records, for the first time in our lives.
A year ago my wife and I received the news that our fourth child, to be born a few months later, had a fatal disease and would most likely not survive birth. If she did, she would not live more than a few hours. We were turned over to grief counselors and referred to a funeral home to make arrangements. Miraculously, she survived birth, then her first few hours, then her first few days. Ten months later Olivia is still alive!
The first few months of Olivia’s life were beautiful and they were hell. We said goodbye to her more times than we could count, but each time she pulled out of it. It was an emotional roller coaster to say the least. We were tired and our nerves were fried. A friend gave us a check and told us to buy something that would bring us some joy. We decided to buy a record player and some vinyl.
I have no problem with digital. It has its place. It’s very convenient. But used improperly, it can feed a growing problem which I believe is sucking the life out of our culture—a problem bigger than poor sonics.
Digitizing a product is a great way to reduce cost and increase sales. Digital music is obviously a more efficient and more productive way to distribute music. But the best way to make something 100% efficient and productive is to remove the life and human element from it. Ones and zeros are more efficient than cutting grooves in records. Astroturf is more efficient than grass and weeds. McDonald’s is more efficient than homemade.
Our culture has become adverse to anything which takes time or causes pain or discomfort or feels in any way inefficient. But those are elements of life and beauty and they can’t be removed without also removing the life and the beauty.
We installed a record player because we wanted to live, here, now. We wanted to take more time to listen to an album, rather than while driving to work. We wanted to listen to music together, rather than alone in our earbuds. We wanted to put a stake in the ground, in a highly visible place to our kids, which says that life is not about getting through as efficiently and productively as possible—it’s about beauty and pain and discomfort and growing and struggling and it takes some time—a lifetime… Life is about living, and there are no shortcuts which don’t also skip over some of the beauty we were meant to have enjoyed.
Olivia is 10 months old, eating, breathing, smiling, and dancing. A few weeks ago we thought she was having a seizure because she kept shaking her head from side to side (like saying “no”). After a while we realized she did it when she heard music—she was dancing! Olivia and I have spent several nights this week listening to Michael Jackson and dancing. Regardless of how much longer Olivia lives, I hope we never go back to our old way of operating. Life is not about efficiency and productivity. Life is about living.
This month we’re releasing our fourth album titled When I Was Young. The last three tracks were recorded here in our home during those dark months earlier this year. All of the tracks speak to the ideas I mentioned above. We’ll release it digitally this month and in a few months we’ll look at doing a vinyl edition. I hope some of the life lessons we’ve learned lately are transferred to the listeners.”
—Nathan Peterson
When I Was Young, the new brand album from Hello Industry, is in stores now.
