“As far back as middle school, I would wander around with the same 3 CDs changing places in my Discman—full disclosure, 2 of the 3 were Creed… I was 12. It’s not my fault.”
“Even throughout high school and college with the rise of the iPod, internet radio stations, and streaming, I still pretty much stuck to albums. While my friends had 1-2 songs from a band on their iPod, I had whole albums. My brother would make fun of me when we had parties, because it took me forever to make a playlist. I was too busy deciding which song I had to cut from my favorite record.
It’s always been like this. I love the flow of a great album. I love when the end of track 3 fades into track 4, or there’s an extra pause at the end of a track 6 to give you a chance to breathe. Those good songs become great because you’re hearing them in context. The fiery anthem of “Born To Run” means so much more after the despair of “Backstreets.” “Beat It” is so much more badass when it comes after “Thriller.” A great album transcends beyond the best single. It lifts all of the tracks up into a more enlightened experience.
Vinyl keeps that experience intact for me. If you take the effort to pull a record out of a sleeve and place it on the turntable, then of course you’re going to listen to the whole thing. You become a participant in the music. You have to surrender to it, to go where the artist wants to take you. It’s a commitment, a journey—not just 3 minutes there and back. A great record will transport you to another world, broken only by the time it takes you to flip over to side B. And even that simple act of turning over a big circle, says “I’m still here, I’m listening.”
Music fills the backgrounds of our lives. We are conveniently disengaged from it. But by putting the needle down we become participants. As a musician, that’s the kind of listener I want—the one who participates, who lets themselves be washed over by the melody and lyric, who hears the warmth, the warble, and the scratch not as a distraction, but as another instrument.”
—Jameson Elder
Jameson Elder’s debut full-length album, Prodigals & Thieves arrives in stores on Friday, February 26. On vinyl.
Enter to win a vinyl copy of Prodigals & Thieves by citing in the comments below the album you listen to continuously from top to bottom—and briefly why. We have 3 copies for 3 winners with North American mailing addresses that we’ll choose one week from today, March 2, 2016.
