We’re delighted to announce that for the third year running, TVD will be taking SXSW. In tandem with our partners Audible Treats and Flüd Watches, we’re presenting Speakers Push Air, an official SXSW artist showcase this Friday night (3/15) at Austin’s Parish Underground. This week we’ll be introducing you to the evening’s line up and talking what else, but vinyl.
“My first record player was made of colorful red and white plastic. It was a Fisher Price Model 825, complete with an orange turntable and a built-in handle to carry it from room to room. It was brand new in 1984, and I loved it.”
“My taste in records at the time was, as you might expect for a toddler, fairly pedestrian. I had singles of most of the classic Disney tunes, a few kids books-on-vinyl, and a few truly random records in wild colors that featured sultry Brazilian chanteuses—records from my mom’s own childhood in Brazil. On weekends, I could be happily occupied for hours just lying on my stomach in front of that Fisher Price, pulling one record and then another out of a box of 7″s, most of them much older than me.
At some point, though, my memories switch abruptly to the other record player in the house, my dad’s. It was a Technics, a serious hi-fi instrument. Not a toy, and definitely not for kids. More precious than the record player, though, was his collection of jazz records. My dad played a decent jazz piano, but he was an absolute aficionado when it came to recordings of the Greats. Miles, Trane, Bird, Monk, Duke, Brubeck, Corea, Hayden, Hancock, Evans, Guaraldi… He had them all on permanent rotation.
Sometimes he’d talk about the records that were playing — Bill Evans’ Explorations, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps — but more often than not, I’d just wake up on a Saturday morning to the sounds of jazz. (For a while, my favorite thing about these grownup records was using the special brush to clean each one before playing it.) It was only much later that I started connecting these powerful memories of certain records to the actual artists who recorded them.
But then I got a CD player, and then an iPod, and then an iPhone. It took me a decade after heading off to college to rediscover vinyl. Not that I ever forgot about it, of course, but in the years since junior high the world had gone digital, and digital was easy and fit in your pocket. So what was the point?
The point, I think, is that when I listened to records on my Fisher Price, it was a totally immersive experience. I wasn’t walking through midtown Manhattan half-listening to some record on earbuds. I was there. And when my dad played Miles on a Saturday morning, it was the whole record, start to finish. The music was all you needed.
Which is why it gets me excited to walk into a record store, whether it’s Culture Clash in Toledo, Ohio, or Sound Fix, in Brooklyn. Those places are still alive. And it’s why I’m even more excited to finally be putting out a record of my own, almost 30 years after listening to my first.”
—Chris Snyder
Ace Reporter’s debut new release, Yearling is on store shelves now via Ooh La La Recordings.
