“I’m going to talk about CDs first and then, I swear, I’ll eventually talk about vinyl.”
“I remember thinking vinyl was lame when I was a kid. Sort of dinosaur artifacts. It was all about CDs for me back then—I was born in ’88. My mother bought a new Jeep Cherokee when I was 7 or so, and as a bonus gift they gave her this gigantic bright yellow boombox that had a massive Jeep logo on it and it took something like 8 D batteries to operate it. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and it sort of just became mine because I had such an obvious affinity for it.
My first CD was Bringing Down The Horse by The Wallflowers which I found in the middle of the street in my neighborhood while riding my bike one day. I used to blast the single “One Headlight” in my front yard for the entire neighborhood to hear. Over the years I started collecting CDs like trophies. Everyone I knew had a giant CD booklet, one of those that holds 8 CDs front and back in little sleeves, and when you went over to someone’s house or got in their car, the first thing you’d do is flip through their collection and figure out who they were.
Your CD collection was sort of your identity. You know, what made you you. I broke up with my first girlfriend because she had too many boy band CDs, and I fell in love for the first time when someone made me my first burned CD—15 songs curated just for me, wrapped up in a little paper love note. That’s what we did, that’s what I remember. I didn’t get into vinyl records until midway through high school and even then, it’s taken me almost my entire adult life to truly appreciate them.
Around age 12, once I finally realized I was never going to be a pro skater, I switched all of my focus to making a rock band. I idolized bands on MTV and used to stand in front of my TV with my unplugged Stratocaster and pretended to play along and rock out. My mom’s brother came to live with is for bit and was so ecstatic that I was so into music that he got someone to ship his vinyl collection down from Ohio for me.
It was a massive collection and had everything in it. So many huge bands that I had never heard of. We had some Beatles Abbey Road, to Styx Pieces of Eight, to The Beach Boys Christmas Album, to Cyndi Lauper She’s So Unusual, to Elton John Honky Chateau, to a bunch of random junk 45s from god knows where. I went from owning zero records to having a legit collection.
I remember first falling in love with the artwork. The covers were so big and colorful and weird. I remember being really freaked out by the guy on fire on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. I never really paid any attention to artwork before, I would trash the jewel cases of my CDs once I put them in my booklet. I liked the vinyl covers so much that I wallpapered my room in them. All four walls.
I got a Crosley record/ cassette/ radio/ CD player for Christmas and set it up right next to my bed so I could easily flip the records. A lot of people talk about how much they love the process of putting on a record and dropping the needle and flipping the record after 18 minutes, but I always found it annoying. At least back then I did. It seemed like such a chore when you could just pop in a CD and skip it to the song you want. Product of my generation I guess. I did like the way they sounded though. There’s no greater sound than that sweet little crackle and pop of old records.
We didn’t press our first record, Pillow Talk, on vinyl at first because we didn’t have the money to do so. Our second record, The Runaround, is the first time I heard our music on vinyl and that’s when everything changed for me. I knew exactly what the songs sounded like but they sounded different on vinyl. It was crisper. It was better. It was more real.
For the first time I caught myself telling people, “You should hear it on vinyl though…” I used to hate when people said that, but now I get it. It sent me on a quest to go back and buy albums I loved on vinyl. Stuff like The Strokes Is This It? and Sufjan Steven’s Illinois, and Deathcab’s Transatlanticism.
I will say that I mostly listen to music on Spotify now—I need the quick fix—but lighting a candle, laying back in bed, and listening to a good record is the closest thing I have to going to church.”
—Alexander Beggins
Expectations, the new release from Austin, TX’s Wild Child is in stores now via Dualtone Records in 4 unique color vinyl variations reflecting the cities of Austin (Butter Cream), Houston (Coke Bottle Clear), San Antonio (Translucent Purple), and Dallas (Translucent Green). The vinyl variations are available at select indie record shops in each city and online via the label’s webstore.
