“Vinyl to me is something that I look back at now as super personal to my childhood.”
“My dad had a bunch of old records and was also a musician. He had tons of Beatles albums and Billy Joel albums (don’t judge), or at least those are the ones I could remember. They all sat in a nice area below the raised hi-fi that was like a piece of furniture for the living room. Back then those towering speakers seemed so massive and the huge silver volume knob on the stereo was one of those small pieces of control for a youth.
As I started playing in bands, there were older people who referenced albums that changed their lives and “Did you ever check out this one?!” That included a lot of classic Zeppelin for some reason. Then the super ’70s-ish artwork caught my eye more than anything. Specifically Yes records that kept popping up in friends’ collection of music. I thought that was so weird and magical all at the same time as the artwork made me want to at least hear what was on that piece of plastic.
Then there were absolutely awful records that somehow played a huge part of my childhood vinyl that included Christmas in the Stars (a Star Wars record), Happy Monsters—An Adventure in the Land of Ooog, and of course Thriller by Michael Jackson. Ok, so the Michael Jackson record was not awful, but it’s just one everyone on the block had, and it was played no less than one million times in our house. Finally, John Denver and the Muppets’ Christmas album. Every household should have this (especially if you have kids).
Only when I got into high school is when I started collecting “cool” vinyl and started looking for it at garage sales. I thought Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger looked and sounded very cool in album/vinyl format. Now vinyl to me is more of an art piece as I don’t have the most amazing turntable to play it on, but vinyl seems to be a prize that one collects to say “I have that on vinyl,” even though we live in a digital age.
My brother went to college down in St. Louis so he would always bring me to Vintage Vinyl and those trips to that store seemed like something special as the store seemed very large and independent. Reckless Records is now my spot in the Chicago loop to pick up anything on vinyl these days. Long live the Happy Monsters.”
—Matt Friscia
Poster Children’s brand new, full-length release, Grand Bargain is in stores now. The band has live dates on the US east coast in July and the west coast through August.
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PHOTO: NATHAN KEAY
