As a child growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, I missed vinyl’s first wave. It was very much something your dad listened to, a medium in the same category as Betamax, 5 ¼ inch floppy disks and Super 8 cameras. No, for me it was the bright new future of VHS, 3 ½ inch floppy disks and, for music, the infinite freedom and flexibility of the cassette.
Back then, the freedom to happily pirate music from your favourite radio station (finger hovering eagerly over the record button during the weekly chart countdown or, later and more wisely, while listening to John Peel or Steve Lamacq on Radio One) was truly liberating. Making mixtapes for a loved one or for friends became an art form, and the “secret track” on albums, usually found right at the end of the tape after minutes of hissing static, was pure gold to a teenager of the time.
And then slowly, sadly, came the inexorable rise of the CD. Sure, you could still make compilations but they seemed so much more clinical, more futuristic. So instead you just slipped one CD (or three, if you were blessed with the Kenwood RXD-700 Hifi system, with dual tape deck and AM/FM radio) in and… pressed shuffle. Or skipped to the track you really wanted to listen to. I think this was the single biggest shift in my relationship with music, the freedom to skip or shuffle meaning there was no longer any need to listen to the whole album to get to the hits. And, if we avoided the evolutionary dead end that was the Mini Disc (all the functionality of a cassette at four times the price and so bloody small you could lose them for days) I think that was a common experience for many people. With the rise of iPods, iTunes, Napster (!) and, finally, Spotify, I think a lot of people simply stopped listening to whole albums, shifting over to making playlists of favourites that perhaps paled somewhat after the 400th listen and convinced you that the natural track that follows the Main Title from the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack is obviously Unchained, from the Django soundtrack.
…my listening habits have shifted 180 degrees, leading me to discover hidden gems on albums I thought I knew, and finding that old favourites shine all the more when alongside their album mates.
Fast forward (or hi-speed scrub, depending on your generational preference) to 2011. As a newly minted father, I suddenly simultaneously had lots and no time on my hands. Time to put some music on but not search through a playlist, skipping through to find a particular track (this was before Alexa, when hands were needed and in short supply with small children around). Family and friends had clubbed together to buy me a record player and my initial reaction was one of bemusement – what’s the point of one of these?
I’d never bought into the whole purist argument (vinyl sounds better) so why switch to a less durable, more expensive and difficult to store format?
And then, listening to Dr Ring Ding’s Ram Di Dance, the scales fell from my eyes. Ok, this isn’t a 70’s prog rock space opera concept album, with a theme and a story flowing through the whole record. But listening to the flow of the tracks in the order they had been planned (I got the A side/B side divide for the first time…) was a breath of fresh air. Since then, my listening habits have shifted 180 degrees, leading me to discover hidden gems on albums I thought I knew, and finding that old favourites shine all the more when alongside their album mates.
Dr Ring Ding Ram Di Dance Side 1
Dr Ring Ding Ram Di Dance Side 2
Here are 4 vinyls for uninterrupted – apart from flipping – listening pleasure
Roseland NYC Live – Portishead
Counterintuitive perhaps – you want to listen to the whole concert without interruptions – but way the album is spread over the 2 records is near perfect.
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill – Lauryn Hill
A classic album which I first got on CD but one that I’ve fallen back in love with on vinyl – and, depending on the version you have, the hidden tracks stay hidden, unlike on CD.
Old Stock – Ben Caplan
A mighty operatic tale of Jewish refugees fleeing a pogrom in Romania to find a new life in Montreal. Tracks like “Traveler’s Curse” or “Lullaby” have made it on to many a playlist of mine, but listening to the whole album from start to finish is definitely a superior experience.
Live at the Harlem Square Club – Sam Cooke
Again, a live album seems an odd choice but Sam Cooke and vinyl are such a natural pairing and this record has some of the best versions of some classic tracks.
Comments
Ah, vinyls! After the mp3 fever hit, visits to the music store were rare. Only now in retrospective, I know how much I enjoyed walking the isles and looking at the labels cataloging the CDs by genre or artists and finger tipping cases until an art cover would caught my eye or I came across something I've heard on MTV or TeleHit. As soon as the second wave of vinyl hit (already in my 30s and in Poland), my first impulse was to pick up where I left off and started surfing the vinyl shelves looking for The White Stripes and all things blues. The joy of perusing covers and the nostalgia of my teenage years all came back while killing time walking my fingers on the shoulders of vinyls sleeves. It's not that I don't use any music streaming service, but rather that I have found once again some small pleasures with vinyl: thinking and looking at what I want to listen, pull the sleeve out of the shelf, the record out of the sleeve and lay it gently on the turntable. Then actually reading some interesting stories or admiring the art inside. Not to mention the therapeutic play time while rearranging my small collection after days of shuffling them around when listening to them. Anyway, I'm sure everyone who's now enjoying flipping sides has got back into a groove with vinyl in their own personal way.
[…] streaming. It has become the norm for us to cherry-pick the tunes we like rather than buckle in to listen to an album through-and-through. And so we miss the personalism in narrative that adds so much to an album; narratives with their […]