Thursday, August 12, 2010

Some of you may have noticed that there was a sudden drop-off in posts starting about 10 days ago. No, it’s not true that I cannot actually make a post while inside the borders of the United States. Instead, the truth is more prosaic: I have no internet connection and, at any rate, am on vacation.

Many of you may know of my affection for vinyl, record players, etc. Since getting  a new turntable back in 2007, I’ve bought about 300 records, including 25 this summer while in St. Petersburg and Istanbul. The Istanbul purchases came from a) a jazz cd shop which began selling vinyl again about two years ago, and b) a newly-opened shop in Cihangir called Plakhane, which sells almost exclusively used records, thousands of albums which were formerly part of the collection of the owner, Deniz (Bey). From him I got a couple of Baris Manco records, Ibrahim Tatlises, Zeki Muren, and MFO.

The Russian records, meanwhile, came from an excursion to the flea market outside of town, where I found several people selling records by bands like Nautilus Pompilius, Kino, Akvarium, Bulat Okuzhava, and others.

The big difference was price: my Russian flea-market albums sold for between 1-3 dollars, whereas the used Turkish vinyl went for between $20-50 apiece. The new Turkish pressings, sold at the jazz shop, were about $25 apiece.

It’s all part of a world-wide trend: more and more vinyl. Last year, I even saw that the Borders in Ann Arbor was selling vinyl again. And if Borders is doing it, it’s long-since happened.

Anyway, while listening to records on my old stereo (which my parents appropriated while I was living in Turkey in the 1990s), I discovered something even more amazing than records. It's called a “cd”—a shiny disc which provides incredibly clear sound! I was totally impressed, and plan on junking my record collection immediately.


The future of music technology is here

I’ll be in touch again sometime after vacation.