“my first experience with vinyl was when i was about 7 years old. a group of little league friends and i had just discovered the beatles and it had struck an obsession that had us all sprouting bowl cuts and dressing up as the fab 4 for halloween and singing from door to door.”
“the only problem was that a couple of the moms weren’t too keen on letting us listen to the later drug influenced records quite yet, and one track in particular, “maxwell’s silver hammer,” which had a violent undertone, rendered the entire abbey road strictly forbidden. naturally, it only made us want it more. since we had been only listening to what had been allotted to us on CD, the only access we had to the forbidden tracks was to raid one of the parent’s vinyl collection and listen in secret. i remember the first time we figured out how to fire it up, hook up the old stripped RCA cables and drop that needle. the smooth sweet spectrum of sound from the forbidden albums filled that old carpeted basement with glory and wonder.
smash cut to age 13. i had picked up the electric guitar pretty good and had an old crate solid state amplifier and a hand me down marshall combo from my cousin. of course in the age of MTV spring break, the romance was turning to vinyl DJs and it fascinated me. i convinced my dad to buy me a set of entry level turntables and a little mixer at guitar center. i hooked the left channel into the crate and the right channel into the marshall and it was on. then he let me raid his old record collection. the only problem was that it was mostly ’60s folk and not enough of that thumping bass i had seen on tv.
i begged him to take me to newbury comics (a classic new england record store and poster/gift shop) for my birthday. i filled my cart with whatever discounted late ’90s house and drum and bass vinyl they had for cheap without doing any research and headed home. i spent the next 3 months destroying half of those old classic records by trying to tempo match bob dylan and paul simon to dj dan or whatever other record i had up and practicing my “scratching” technique.
as i got a little older i started to treasure those old records through a different set of glasses. the mp3 movement was in full swing but preferred something that i could hold and feel proud of. a shelf or egg crate full of old friends telling me the stories i wanted to hear. i would raid bull moose music in salem, nh and other classic mom and pop record stores to expand my collection, even turning some flea markets upside down to try to find the classic missing title that would complete my collection. the problem is the collection is never really complete…it becomes more of a lifestyle choice.
this year i chose to put dog years out on vinyl over a month before it went live on streaming services in an attempt to revisit that classic music listening experience that i miss so dearly. peeling back the plastic wrap. the smell of the cardboard. the feel of the wax. that crackle when you first drop the needle down and anxiously await those first few notes to come out of the speakers. a world where you digest a whole body of work rather than a piecemealed modern mixtape approach where the modern attention span gets you through 1:30 of one of your favorite cuts and it’s time to move on to the next. an experiment that was worth trying for me…one that hopefully created a few memories and served up a bit of nostalgia in a time where we all need music the most.”
—martin johnson
Dog Years, the new full length release from The Night Game is in stores now—on vinyl.
