Simon Lunche, The TVD First Date

“There’s a Harry Potter closet under the stairs in the house I grew up in. When I was little the whole thing was crammed full of stuff to the point you could barely move in there. Jackets, baseball gloves, and stereo equipment filled most of it.”

“However buried far in the back there were two boxes of old vinyl records. It took me quite a bit of digging, but I remember how excited I was as a 6 year old kid to see Abbey Road and Revolver amongst so many other cool album covers peeking out at me from behind the barricade of junk. I had found my dads old record collection.

Shuffling violently through the boxes, I picked out all of the Beatles and Beach Boys albums I could find and set them aside on the floor. At this point in time I was in elementary school, probably in first grade, and I’d ask my parents to put on “California Girls” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand” every day on the way to school. So those records were extra special to me when I found them in the old vinyl box.

At this point in my life my family didn’t have a record player, so much to my dismay I couldn’t actually listen to the records I found. I remember asking my parents over and over if we could get a player but all the good ones were always too pricey and my dad didn’t want to play such old records on a bad table that would mess them up. Funny enough, to this day I’ve never actually listened to those particular records.

Their significance to me was really in what they represented. Being 6 years old at the time and idolizing music from the ’50s and ’60s, a vinyl record looked like the real deal to me. Like what an album should look like.

There’s something about that format with the big photo and liner notes that’s just special. You can feel the work put into it. I ended up hanging them all on the wall of my bedroom where they lived for many years providing inspiration to little me while I was discovering my musical identity.”
—Simon Lunche