In recent years, there have been various resurgences in forms of media deemed outdated by those that came to replace them, relics of a time we thought was behind us that have now come to define a kind of covert cool.
There's perhaps no better known example of this than vinyl records. Stores which cater to vinyl collectors are, to my mom's surprise, alive and well and even booming in the right communities. It's not exactly the most niche interest anymore, either. Even some supermarkets like Target have caught on a bit, making a little spot between aisles for a record kiosk in the electronics section.
Record companies produce brand new albums onto vinyl and some classics are being re-pressed into vinyl for re-release. People lust after first editions, limited editions, foreign copies, color copies, stereo/mono remastering and any number of other variations of the same album
It's become the hip thing to collect these old sound discs, insisting on the purity of their sound and turning your nose up at digital waveform media like mp3 and WAV.
But why?
Well, there are a million other articles that will try to explain most other people's obsessions with them, most of them claiming superiority of sound quality
Or you can just ask the guy at Aspen who looks like this, and he'll tell you.
But the reason I collect them is simple: I just think they're neat. My primary argument for vinyl doesn't come from a place of pretentious aural superiority. In terms of pure engineering, they fascinate me.
They're much simpler than all the processes the modern computer goes through to store thousands of hours of music and play them at a moment's notice, but we don't get to see all those processes simply because they're digital. They're packed into a neat box (e.g. a phone, a laptop) so I don't have to think about it. But records, you're seeing the entire process because you're involved in it actively.
You take place in a ritual.
When you set a record down on the player, you then move the arm and needle of the player into place so that it falls gently onto the outermost grooves of the record. In moving the arm of the player into the play, the turntable now goes into motion, spinning the disc to life in hypnotic revolutions. From here, you flip the lever that allows the needle on the arm to make contact with the grooves.
You hear the soft scraping of the record against the gentle needle as it surfs along the surface of those grooves. You hear for a moment something like waves and soft crackles and pops as the record's run begins and then suddenly the first notes of the opening track are playing out at you. Save for sitting down and kicking back, the ritual's complete.
Now I don't know about you, but for me, that's absolute magic. It feels like I'm witnessing an illusion any time I see one play to this day. If any alike experience in my life is any indication, anything plastic or plastic-like making contact with something we refer to as a needle should make a terrible scraping sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard. And yet for well over 100 years, we've had a technology that defies that in order to not simply make wonderful, complex polyphonic sounds, but to make sounds that we create.
For how old the technology is, they happen to sound pretty great, too--definitely as good as a digital recording if not better, especially on a real mint copy.
That's part of the allure in itself. I used to collect rocks and geodes as a kid. Particularly, I valued rocks of certain beauty or symmetry. You look for this in records, too. It's beautiful to find an old favorite with the cover worn off that still plays alright. Even if there's a better recording on your computer, it's still nice to say you have an album that means so much to you in your physical collection. It's something else to find a favorite in killer quality. It becomes your baby.
Now I'm not usually one to casually promote materialism, but certain objects carry parts of us in them. Some things are easy to collect because we identify with them whether for their artistic beauty or how much enjoyment we get out them. The records I own that I prize the most, the ones that I covet that I seek out any time I'm hunting in bargain bins-- these say a lot about my own tastes in music, what's influenced me, what I've had the most fun with.
They say things about who I am and who I've been.
What do you hold on to? What's important to you?