“I’m a big vinyl fan, but it wasn’t always that way. When I was younger I collected CDs, a whole lot of CDs. They were the most accessible way for me as a kid to experience new music, but they were more than that as well. TV shows and radio were great and all, but if you wanted to really delve into what a band or an artist was about and what they’d created, you had to experience the album, and for me that was CDs.”
“Part way through my CD collecting days newer technology started to creep in. Phones could hold music now! Not a lot of music though, so you’d pick a couple of tracks from here, a track from there, you’d put your CDs into your computer and start harvesting them for songs; these little moments you could take anywhere with you. But this made sure we had to be very selective, I remember picking short songs to try to squeeze more onto phones and iPods, I don’t even know how people dealt with an iPod shuffle. The playlist became the norm, and these randomized songs lost their context, their place in time and their carefully crafted place within their albums. This is what brings me to vinyl.
You can’t play a record on the bus or at the gym, and you definitely can’t shuffle it. For me vinyl was the transformative object that would turn a set of songs into an experience and take the songs back to the way they were meant to be heard. The records themselves become these physical manifestations of these moments as you yourself move the needle over, sit in front of the stereo, and hold the gatefold in your hands.
For me this is what gives them their value, what makes me line up outside at 4AM on Record Store Day for an album I truly want to experience, or make a point to seek out the record stores on a trip somewhere new.
Singles were exciting on vinyl too. I remember sneaking into my older brother’s room long before I had my own player, (I’d still sneak in and use his superior set-up if we lived in the same postcode). I’d bring in 7″s bought at gigs at first with singles I knew, but with B-sides I’d never heard of.
I’d listen in dead silence as they came on, the first beat accentuated by that wait after the needle goes down. A good B-side can still be the coolest thing in the world, turning a 7″ or 10″ into a real treasure. I’m sure that with quite a few years passed I could find a few of those B-sides on Spotify now, but I’m pretty sure I’d feel a bit of an empty feeling at the same time.
So much of my vinyl is second-hand and it’s something that I’m really happy about. My copy of Depeche Mode’s Some Great Reward is battered and bruised, with lines of paint alongside the ‘Printed in W. Germany’ label. It’s nice to think about the histories of these records and what they meant to someone at a given time. It feels like holding a time capsule.
With this in mind, I’m looking forward to passing my vinyl onto someone someday, hopefully they’ll have some experiences like I’ve had with them. It’s nice to think of these records being passed on and enjoyed as they should be.”
—Jonno
“Skylines,” Living Dead Girl’s debut single, is in stores now via LDG Records.
