Josh Haden, The TVD First Date

“I’m 46 years old and I was born in a time when CDs didn’t exist.”

“Vinyl was the predominant media for music although analog tape was popular too. I remember being five years old, putting on headphones and getting lost in the artwork of the Beatles’ Revolver. I got lost in other LPs at an early age, the Byrds’ Greatest Hits, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Queen’s Jazz, Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants—remember that record? The album cover was perfumed. You can’t really get lost in CD artwork. Forget about mp3 artwork. It’s a different time for kids now.

Both of my parents come from musical backgrounds. I’ve been surrounded by vinyl my whole life. There’s pictures of me as a baby in my cradle with Ornette Coleman albums in the background. When I got to be high school age the first thing I did was get a job at a record store. First at Tower Records, and then at Rhino Records, both on the westside of Los Angeles.

I worked at the Rhino Records store on and off for years. I met so many amazing people there. They still feel like family. My entire formative musical career was created from vinyl records I found at Rhino. I still have many of those albums.

In the mid-1990s when my band Spain released our debut album The Blue Moods Of Spain there was discussion from the record label about releasing it on vinyl but the label dismissed it as too costly. Same story for our two subsequent albums on that label. CDs were too popular. There was no point in arguing with the label.

I’m so happy that almost twenty years later Omnivore Records have released Spain’s first three albums on vinyl for the first time. The improved sound quality and big artwork is how those albums were meant to be presented. Record labels like Omnivore are saving great music from extinction. Likewise for the labels that put out my current music, Glitterhouse in Europe and Dine Alone in North America and Australia.

Both labels have and/or are releasing my latest albums on vinyl and the vinyl and artwork look and sound great. ¡Viva Vinyl!”
—Josh Haden