How I Got Back Into the Groove with Vinyl

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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.

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[nk_text vc_css=”.vc_custom_1600199393979{background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”]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 400^th 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. [/nk_text] [nk_text]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?[/nk_text] [nk_text]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.[/nk_text]

[nk_title like=”” style=””]Here are 4 vinyls for uninterrupted – apart from flipping – listening pleasure[/nk_title]

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Roseland NYC Live – Portishead

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The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill – Lauryn Hill

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Old Stock – Ben Caplan

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Live at the Harlem Square Club – Sam Cooke

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