Satin Nickel, The TVD First Date

“No joke, I have none other than The Doors to thank for opening the door to the world of vinyl for me.”

“Actually, I should first throw a quick shout out to the video game Need for Speed Underground 2 and its killer soundtrack. Around the age of 10, I would spend countless hours virtually swerving through city streets, mostly to fast-paced songs by bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Rise Against. There was one track, however, that would always make me slow to a cruise. Snoop Dogg and producer Fredwreck collaborated on an exclusive remix of “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors that combined new verses with Jim Morrison’s original chorus over a hip hop beat. I just could not get enough of Snoop’s sly rhymes and the Lizard King’s haunting voice complementing one another as I coasted along in my decked out Audi TT.

Anyway, let’s get to what any of that has to do with vinyl. Cut to a few years later, just before 8th grade. While away at summer camp, I took a writing class taught by one of the “cool” counselors, who was willing to bend some rules. The camp higher-ups stressed that since we were guests on a college campus, we were not to touch anything professors left behind in the facilities. However, upon entering his classroom, Cool Counselor noticed a turntable with a stack of records beside it. He couldn’t resist plugging it in and letting us kids put on music during a free writing session.

This practice became a staple of the class. When it was finally my turn to have a look at the album options, my eyes immediately met those of Jim Morrison gazing through a mop of curls. He had his arms stretched out wide from a shirtless, skeletal torso and his head cocked slightly to the side as if to say, “Want some?” What he was offering was The Best of The Doors and I thought, “Alright, man, let’s see what you got!” I quickly flipped to the back cover hoping to find “Riders on the Storm” on the tracklist as I’d never heard the original version. And there it was; disc 2, side 1, track 4. I had to hear it.

The ritualistic process of putting on a record was captivating. Sliding a 12-inch disc out of a sleeve adorned with large-scale album art, placing it on a turntable, and easing the needle into its initial crackle felt infinitely more thrilling than feeding a CD to the mechanical tongue of my boom box back home. At the time I didn’t know you could look for smooth spaces between a record’s grooves to find a particular song, so I had to just let it rip from the top. After what felt like an eternity, especially being that track 3 was the nearly 8-minute long “LA Woman,” a rumble of thunder and a rush of rainfall seamlessly led into the entrancing bass groove of “Riders.” I remember horror stories being the theme of the class that day and let’s just say Jim’s chilling lyrics based on what I later learned to be the true story of a murderous hitch-hiker provided plenty of inspiration.

Upon returning home a few weeks later, I remember being way more excited to talk about vinyl than anything else I’d experienced at camp. When I mentioned having listened to The Best of The Doors, my mom shocked me by replying, “I think I have that one.” Wait, what?! Lo and behold she had around 50 records stowed away in a closet. Her turntable had met an unfortunate end at the hands of my older brother when he was a toddler. It was never replaced as she had already begun to buy CDs predominantly, but her vinyl collection remained in pristine condition.

I browsed through it as though I’d uncovered a treasure chest. The Doors were in the first-class company of Sade, Grace Jones, Madonna, U2, Duran Duran, Nina Hagen, The B-52’s, and several more. I couldn’t just let them sit there and collect dust. I hunted down one of those retro-looking turntable/CD player/radio gizmos for relatively cheap online. A week later, it was plugged in and blasting “Break On Through (To The Other Side)” within 60 seconds of its unboxing.

That was the start of my vinyl collecting journey which has now lasted nearly 15 years. I had the fortune of growing up just outside New York City and visits to its iconic record stores quickly became a regular part of family outings. When I got a little older and Record Store Day was deemed a national holiday, I would take the train into the city with a gang of music-loving friends first thing in the morning, spending the whole day scoring limited editions and winners from the $1 crate.

I now have crate digging memories from all over the world that are vividly evoked by particular albums. For instance, I am transported to my parents’ home country of Serbia by the albums purchased from a Belgrade street vendor on my many visits there. Similarly, several of my Led Zeppelin records were found on a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I was performing in its famous Fringe Festival. I can always count on Robert Plant screaming, “Hey hey Mama said the way you move gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove!” to recall sprinting to catch a bus to that night’s performance after losing track of time among the shelves of old vinyl.

We all have memories closely tied to certain songs or albums, but none of mine are nearly as rife with visceral nostalgia as those involving vinyl.”
—Nikola Balac