Music

My Love For Vinyl

When I was a kid I would spend hours marvelling over my parents record collection, there was an air of something magical and yet delicate surrounding the whole process of taking the record from its sleeve, placing it on the turntable and gently lowering the needle only to hear the crackle and then the opening bars of a song.

As I got older I started building my own collection which took my appreciation for the format to a whole new level. The search is always ongoing to find those gems, I find myself ducking and diving into every charity shop I pass in hope I uncover some long lost treasure, nine times out of ten there’s nothing of interest but on that occasion you unearth something special you feel you’ve hit the jackpot, whether it be a first pressing of a classic or a limited edition coloured version of some obscure release.

And then you have the record shop itself, a mythical place that holds wall to wall music, hundreds of albums spanning all genres and decades, waiting to be listened to, to be discovered and adored. The time and effort spent thumbing your way through each rack is far more rewarding that clicking a download button on a computer, even if you come away with nothing at the end of it.

The relationship we have with vinyl is tactile, we can feel it, it has a weight to it, we must look after it in order to keep it from being destroyed. This relationship creates a kind of bond with your collection, it reflects what kind of person you are, what music you’re interested in and ultimately what the music means to you. It forms your identity, a musical fingerprint for you to privately enjoy or share with friends, in my mind there is little else that compares to the joy of sharing the music you love with others and having others share theirs with you.

The intimacy doesn’t end with the music itself but extends into the sleeve covers & linear notes, how often have you studied the front of a CD cover or the little digital version of it within iTunes? The vinyl sleeve cover is a work of art, capturing your imagination, luring you in, asking you to unlock the meaning and taking you deeper into the music itself.

So whenever I hear that crackle and see that needle bobbing gently up and down I think of friends and the memories I have of them, I remember the first time I heard a piece of music that overjoyed me so much I couldn’t help but leap around the room. For some a vinyl record is an outdated piece of technology, just a chunk of plastic in a cardboard sleeve but for me and many others it’s something more, it stirs something deep within me, it’s a symbol of boyhood dreams, memories and joy.

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