“My family moved from Detroit to the west coast when I was 12. We moved around a lot growing up, so by the time we made it to Sacramento, I didn’t have a lot of friends and I was quite well read yet introverted little kid.”
“My single mother created a lot of opportunities for me but had three other children much younger than me to care for, so I ended up doing a lot of “me” time. Naturally, in 1997 with nothing else to do, I turned to MTV and rock music magazines to search for a way to fill my brain. By 14, with my meager allowance doing chores and yard work, I had amassed a few shoe boxes of cassettes and a few CDs. It wasn’t much looking back but I knew every lyric, drum hit, bass line and layer of my small, strong collection.
I hadn’t yet been to a proper record store and I didn’t really care at the time. That drastically changed when I first purchased Space Oddity by David Bowie. That record became my whole life—I would play it endlessly all summer in my room. I must have ruined that album for my mom.
We shared a house with my uncle who had a giant vinyl collection. I was usually at school when he worked but he would play records on the weekends and jam on his drum kit in the garage. One day I heard the familiar finger picking of “Letters to Hermione.” Being a lovesick hormonal teenager I would listen to that song and imagine I was Bowie…forlorn and serenading my lost love.
Hearing that song and “Cygnet Committee” on the record player was like an explosion. The album sounded different, it felt like it was transmitting the music directly from David himself somewhere out in space. I asked my uncle why it sounded so different, he explained (like a cool uncle) how vinyl was the “real deal” and how digital cleanliness got rid of the human element.
He told me where to go—Tower Records, a local store in Sacramento. It was the center of my universe, I couldn’t afford vinyl at the time but I would flip through the jackets and look at the art and discover all the old bands that influenced the bands I loved. I learned about bootlegs and international releases and felt like I had uncovered the secret knowledge of rock n’ roll directly from the source.
As time went on and I played in bands and learned to produce music. I think my obsession for capturing the rawness and emotion only grew stronger. With the advent of digital music I still hold the quality of Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges as superior to the endless compression and limits of modern pop. I think the act of taking time to dig through crates and pick a perfect record to listen to is a personal investment that everyone should make.”
—Erik Harris
In Conflict, the debut LP from Memory Cult arrives in stores today, March 4, 2020.
