CLASSIC CUTS Besides the music
they contain, vintage vinyl albums carry
a bit of our own personal DNA.
fully. “A record warns you something’s
gonna happen with all the noise it
makes. But this is a compact disk.
When it’s quiet, it’s damn quiet.”
Maybe too quiet. Even after CDs
nudged vinyl out the record-store
door in the late 1980s, enthusiasts
stuck to their position that vinyl’s
sound reproduction was ultimately
more satisfying than digital’s. Warmer
is the word used most frequently,
and Jason Boyd, who oversees vinyl-
record production and sales for music
giant EMI, tried to explain it to me.
“The imperfections of the sound—
the low ends—are sonically appealing,”
Boyd says. “CD is most pristine. But
vinyl has the warm, full sound of the
music. The cracks and the little imperfections that pop up seem to enhance
the music. It’s a way of experiencing
music rather than just consuming it.”
Boyd is probably right. But here’s
my theory: it’s the unique imperfections of each vinyl record that make
it irreplaceable. After enough plays, a
record becomes a fingerprint of your
listening experience. Just about everyone who owned the Beatles’ White
Album wore the thing down to a nub.
Your copy, like mine, is a crackling
mess through “Cry Baby Cry”—but
then it becomes a mint-condition
collector’s item the moment that un-listenable jumble of sounds the Lads
called “Revolution 9” fades in.
Indeed, all of our records carry an
indelible personal stamp: the skip
on your copy of The
Dark Side of the
Moon that results
in Roger Waters’s
repeating “Money!”
over and over…the
holiday album you still
play despite the damage
it sustained in that unfortunate 1962 Christmas-tree pine-needle
accident...the Shari Lewis record you
kicked off the turntable while you
were dancing, so now Lamb Chop
repeats herself, like Rain Man.
ListenOnlıne!
See Me, Feel Me
Even the nonlistening rituals of record ownership are burned into the
memories of everyone who ever had
a collection. Need proof? Head down
to a music store and buy a record—
most larger shops now have at least
a small vinyl section. The rest will
Where to GET RECORDS
Online For used rec-
ords, vinyl guru Michael
Fremer suggests GEMM
.com, which directs you
to online auctions and
dealers. For new vinyl,
any large music retailer
(Amazon, Borders,
Barnes and Noble, etc.)
has access to just about
everything out there.
Check the large collection
of Capitol/EMI reissues
(fromthecapitolvaults
.com), including records
by Frank Sinatra, Roxy
Music, and The Beach
Boys; and Rhino records’
( rhino.com) albums by
Chicago, Depeche Mode,
The Doors, and the Bee
Gees (including an au-
thentic red-flocked,
gold-print copy of their
double album, Odessa).
Thrift Stores Good-
will, Salvation Army, and
secondhand stores have
bins brimming with
castoff vinyl. Flipside:
There’s no quality con-
trol, so the disks can be
in awful shape.
Used-Record
Stores Most cities
have a bunch of outlets,
many of which make
some effort to organize
the musical genres.
Yard Sales Just look
for the box too heavy to
lift. You might get the
whole shebang for a
couple of bucks. —B.N.
come naturally: bring
the record home (on
the way, I guarantee,
you’ll admire the cover artwork). Now slip
your thumbnail into the
cellophane sheath, right
at the album’s business end,
and slide it along. Feel that flutter in your stomach as the album
opens? You’re remembering what it’s
like to access your music with a single,
graceful stroke—instead of peeling,
stabbing, cutting, and finally biting
your way into a CD jewel case. Now
slide out the inner sleeve. There she is:
the proud, black thing of beauty, her label winking at you through the sleeve’s
center hole. As you extract the disk
from the sleeve, you’ll find you haven’t
forgotten how to hold it safely: your
thumb at the ridge, the label resting on
your fingers. If you’re lucky enough to
still have your turntable (if you don’t,
see “What to Play Them On,” page
52), you’ll deftly center the record on
the spindle. Best of all, the disk won't
hop into a drawer and disappear into
a box, like a CD. It will stay right there
in plain view, singing to you at a steady
33 1/3 revolutions per minute.
Then there’s the structure of a two-sided album. In the old days, records
were programmed in two acts: Side
One and Side Two. Someone who’s
never flipped an LP would be mightily puzzled over the lyric at the end
of Side One on the Carpenters’ fourth
album, A Song for You: “We’ll be right
back/After we go (CONTINUED ON PAGE 62)
