I suspect this may turn into more of a rant than a piece of nostalgia and I know that, when we next have a beer, John will accuse me of being a Luddite but I've just seen an item on TV that has reminded me how nostalgic I get for vinyl. Today is, apparently, Independent Record Stores Day and on TV they were just interviewing a club DJ and a technology writer and their, predictably, different views reminded me of how much I used to enjoy buying records.
There is probably no one of my generation who can't tell you what the first album they bought was. My first two were Bursting At The Seams, by the Strawbs, and Kimono My House, by Sparks both bought in Woolworths in Bilston. Nowadays not only would I find it hard to buy records at all I certainly wouldn't be doing it in Woolworth's, would I?
It isn't just the vinyl that I'm nostalgic for, though. It's the whole process of buying it. I remember when I used to go, on Saturdays, to the record shops in Wolverhampton and spend hours in them. I would go through the racks of LPs in Ruby Red Records* or Sundown and look at every record in the racks. I'd pull them out one by one, look at the great artwork on the sleeves, read the sleeve notes, consider buying them and then put them back as my funds as a teenager were rather limited. The shops were small with narrow aisles and walls covered in posters. They were often quite dark and pokey. I could spend an afternoon in them and not even realise how much time had gone by. Later I extended my range to shops in West Bromwich, Walsall, Dudley and Birmingham. I remember scouring all of them for the multiple picture disc versions of early Toyah singles and being so pleased when I finally found them
Of course vinyl is nowhere near as easy to get nowadays, hasn't been for years. Some things are released on vinyl but mainly for the benefit of club DJs so it isn't my kind of music. When CDs came out I had no special objection to the format but as they quickly, and virtually completely, superseded vinyl I soon started to miss the packaging. Gone were the wonderful imaginative sleeves. OK, the CDs had the same cover artists working on them but were a quarter of the size. It wasn't the same. And how could they duplicate stuff like the marvellous fold out desk of Alice Cooper's Schools Out, the bizarre mirrored front of the original release of Uriah Heep's Look At Yourself or the great triple gatefold of ELP's Welcome Back My Friends. Even something as minimalist as the Beatles' White Album just isn't the same when it comes as a CD insert.
Now of course even the CD packaging is going as downloading takes over the world. CD shops (I refuse to call them record shops if they don't sell records!) are struggling. Their stock takes up space and a download doesn't. I listened to the street interviews in the item on TV and despaired. Only one person seemed nostalgic at all about vinyl and most of the younger ones just didn't understand why you would want to buy something that you kept in your house when you could download something and take it everywhere with you. For them portability was the key element of value. For me every change that has reduced the actual "physicality" of what you get has reduced the value. CDs have the same musical value as vinyl but they are not as nice to own. I suppose, purely in terms of the music, so do downloads but they have nothing at all that you can hold and look at and tell your friends "Wow, did you see the cover of Topographic Oceans? Roger Dean is a genius!"
To today's instant-gratification, information-saturated, techno-junkie teenagers my attitude is about as comprehensible as if I were proposing that we should go out and kill and skin a bear to make a coat or light a fire by banging rocks together, and their attitude is just as meaningful to me. I wish I could say that it's their loss, but it isn't. You can't lose something you never had. The loss is mine, and my whole generations.
There is probably no one of my generation who can't tell you what the first album they bought was. My first two were Bursting At The Seams, by the Strawbs, and Kimono My House, by Sparks both bought in Woolworths in Bilston. Nowadays not only would I find it hard to buy records at all I certainly wouldn't be doing it in Woolworth's, would I?
It isn't just the vinyl that I'm nostalgic for, though. It's the whole process of buying it. I remember when I used to go, on Saturdays, to the record shops in Wolverhampton and spend hours in them. I would go through the racks of LPs in Ruby Red Records* or Sundown and look at every record in the racks. I'd pull them out one by one, look at the great artwork on the sleeves, read the sleeve notes, consider buying them and then put them back as my funds as a teenager were rather limited. The shops were small with narrow aisles and walls covered in posters. They were often quite dark and pokey. I could spend an afternoon in them and not even realise how much time had gone by. Later I extended my range to shops in West Bromwich, Walsall, Dudley and Birmingham. I remember scouring all of them for the multiple picture disc versions of early Toyah singles and being so pleased when I finally found them
Of course vinyl is nowhere near as easy to get nowadays, hasn't been for years. Some things are released on vinyl but mainly for the benefit of club DJs so it isn't my kind of music. When CDs came out I had no special objection to the format but as they quickly, and virtually completely, superseded vinyl I soon started to miss the packaging. Gone were the wonderful imaginative sleeves. OK, the CDs had the same cover artists working on them but were a quarter of the size. It wasn't the same. And how could they duplicate stuff like the marvellous fold out desk of Alice Cooper's Schools Out, the bizarre mirrored front of the original release of Uriah Heep's Look At Yourself or the great triple gatefold of ELP's Welcome Back My Friends. Even something as minimalist as the Beatles' White Album just isn't the same when it comes as a CD insert.
Now of course even the CD packaging is going as downloading takes over the world. CD shops (I refuse to call them record shops if they don't sell records!) are struggling. Their stock takes up space and a download doesn't. I listened to the street interviews in the item on TV and despaired. Only one person seemed nostalgic at all about vinyl and most of the younger ones just didn't understand why you would want to buy something that you kept in your house when you could download something and take it everywhere with you. For them portability was the key element of value. For me every change that has reduced the actual "physicality" of what you get has reduced the value. CDs have the same musical value as vinyl but they are not as nice to own. I suppose, purely in terms of the music, so do downloads but they have nothing at all that you can hold and look at and tell your friends "Wow, did you see the cover of Topographic Oceans? Roger Dean is a genius!"
To today's instant-gratification, information-saturated, techno-junkie teenagers my attitude is about as comprehensible as if I were proposing that we should go out and kill and skin a bear to make a coat or light a fire by banging rocks together, and their attitude is just as meaningful to me. I wish I could say that it's their loss, but it isn't. You can't lose something you never had. The loss is mine, and my whole generations.
(*Ruby Red Records, like a few other independents does still exist. It isn't the same though. But that, of course, is the very essence of nostalgia.)
2 comments:
Not a Luddite at all. Rather you have framed it properly as the passing of the possibility of experience. I recall as a teenager flipping through the record racks. However, as I entered my 20s (and accompanying increased purchasing power) CDs were coming in and this was replaced by flipping through the CD racks for curios and oddities. Thus while I am saddened by the passing of Swordfish, in truth, like Woolies before it went, it has been ages since I bought anything there - use it or loose it :-).
But to return to the point, I too am nostalgic for the experience of seeking out something and coming across an unexpected delight - which has simply never happened for me online.
As for the passing of the desire to experience owning an object, an object having more than one function, being defined by more than simply its content, perhaps if you are a Luddite then I am a Luddite too.
A lot of people, including audio engineers, say that vinyl usually sounds better than digital. It's not bytes of information with space inbetween the bytes. It's full complete sound. My first vinyl record was given to me as a gift for my 10th birthday in 1969. It was Sailor by Steve Miller. My neighbor got American Woman by the Guess Who. We spun those records over and over again and then started looking for how we could get more. A great spot to find those old vinyls from shops and sellers around the world is GEMM.com .
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