“Vinyl records have always been a big part of my musical upbringing.”
“When I was a little kid, I remember that I’d ask to hear Leo Kottke’s 6 and 12 String Guitar on my older sister’s record player instead of a bedtime story. My family would all sit around in the living room and listen to records, and those were some of my best memories.
The thing about vinyl records is that they have a heirloom quality to them – each one is a little different, or seems to have a story that goes with it. When my brother gave me a copy of the B-52’s first album because it had warped from the heat in his car, I listened to that record – with the same skips and warbles – until I basically wore it out, and I probably still hear the songs that way in my head.
My bandmate Ramon Medina and I used to go hang out at each other’s houses when we were kids, bringing our records with us and saying, “You gotta check this out!!!” …and we’d go through my brother’s record bin, finding all these gems like Mountain’s Climbing! or Peter Kaukonen’s Black Kangaroo. Stuff we never, ever would have found on our own. It was a community thing, about your friends and your family, and I think a lot of that is missing from the way people listen to music with newer technology.
A bunch of my college buddies used to go all over town, hitting every record store we could, and since I had a car, I was the driver. These guys all ended up being in bands together later on, so I like to think that the shared experience of record hunting all over the greater Houston area played a part in that.
I’m amazed that so many of the stores that were around back then are still going strong, like Cactus, Sound Exchange, and the legendary Vinal Edge. The people that run the independent record stores here in our town are really dedicated, and incredibly supportive of the local music scene. They have bands play in-stores, stock local releases, and work really hard on maintaining a sense of community amongst themselves as well; there’s a lot of mutual respect and support there.”
—Clinton Heider (guitar/vocals)
Linus Pauling Quartet’s Assault on the Vault of the Ancient Bong Lords, their epic career retrospective box set, will be unleashed to the masses on January 22, 2013.
