Saturday, January 22, 2011

Yesterday was a big day for me. My record player arrived.

Now I own two.

In high school and college I accumulated a collection totaling a bit more than three hundred lps and maybe another fifty 45s. I had a particularly good collection of picture discs and colored vinyl—gimmicky stuff that I still like buying.


I purchased a picture disc of Houses of the Holy last month from a store in Bozeman,but don't have nearly as much of this sort of thing as I used to 

After I finished college, I sold off almost my entire collection to used record stores in Montreal. I saved only a handful-a rare Nigerian print record ("Bobby") by King Sunny Ade, a couple of Beastie Boys albums, and two Kraftwerk records making up the bulk of the collection and its finest pieces.

It was only after buying an iPod in 2005 that I really developed a hankering for listening to vinyl. I had downloaded hundreds of entire albums during my graduate school years without ever listening to them—until I bought the iPod. Before long, I was only listening to entire albums. Whenever I simply listened to individual songs, I often fell into clicking ahead to the next tune before the one I was listening to had ended. Listening to an entire album on a single file locked me into the logic of the album, and with certain albums that was something I liked.

Back in Ann Arbor the following summer I wandered into Wazoo, a store I used to go to in high school. The guy was playing an instrumental version of Common's "Be."  I'd never heard of Common or Kanye West (who was the producer of the album), but I thought it was incredible—and it was on a double lp. I bought it and took it back to my parents house, where I played it on my old record player—which my parents had appropriated for themselves while I was in Turkey in the 1990s.


I know it's sappy to say this, but this song always sounds really 'joyful'  to me

I started buying records whenever I was in Ann Arbor, especially if I was there in the summertime when my parents weren't around and I could blast the records on my old stereo.
 
I never considered buying a new record player, and hauling the old one (along with the receiver, which was also more than twenty years old, and speakers) out to Rhode Island seemed too difficult. And I didn't think of buying a new one, until my friend Matt (who owns a record store in Ann Arbor) suggested I buy an audio-technica.

The audio-technica AT-LP60 is nothing but plastic. It's not a high quality system—but, barbarian that I am, I don't think it sounds bad. It's convenient, considering it's a turntable. It's cheap—about $70, including shipping, and it plugs directly into computer speakers so you don't need a receiver or special speakers.




Why listen to records? Most people who like listening to records say they prefer the sound of vinyl, but to be honest I don't know if I could even tell the difference between a song on vinyl or one on CD. I think I like records mostly because they're the medium I listened to when I first really fell in love with music. I'd missed having them in my life, and once I realized that records were making a comeback I started buying records and thinking about getting a turntable.

After talking to Matt, I bought the turntable. That was in late 2007, when I was living in New York. Since that time I've built my collection back up to 350 albums or so.

I took my turntable and records out to Montana with me when I moved out there in August of 2009. During the drive, I even brought the turntable and some records into my room a couple of times in order to listen to Frank Zappa's Waka Jawaka, a particular favorite at the time.


The title track on Waka Jawaka is one of my favorite Zappa songs, but it's also rather atypical for Zappa

It's a portable machine, and ever since moving into my apartment in DC last Saturday I've been dragging it up and down the stairs between my bedroom and the living room. I decided to shoot the works and buy a second one, and now it's here.

I'm still trying to figure out why I like records so much. I never liked CDs, and have never taken care of the CDs I've bought. Back in Turkey, I listened to tapes, and I still have loads of great tapes purchased in places like Macedonia, India, Vietnam, and many of the other countries I traveled around in during those years. If scientists could come up with ways to preserve tapes, we'd really be making progress in the world.


I'm glad records are back, but what about the tapes, people? 

I won't listen to just anything on vinyl, it has to be something I like from beginning to end. Usually, I prefer music that flows well together from song to song, like jazz or funk or something. I like handling the records, too, and the simplicity of the technology is refreshing. There are just three buttons to press on the AT-LP60, and they have a nice physical feel. Nevertheless, I wish the turntable came with a "repeat" function, or a remote.

Records are definitely making a comeback—worldwide! Did you know that there is a day called "Record Store Day" in the United States? It's April 16, and last year on Record Store Day a friend of mine and I wandered into a place in Bozeman without knowing what was going on—we just wanted to check out some music. They gave us some really cool promotional bags and even a free 45 (one of two I have now, the other I ordered by mistake online). Anyway, I'm definitely going to try to check out Record Store Day in Washington, if I remember.



And last summer I was wandering down a side street between Taksim and Cihangir in Istanbul when I saw some records on display at a shop. It was a record store! Some dude—a rocker—was selling off his personal collection, thousands of lps. He had some really rare Turkish stuff, including Baris Manco, Zeki Muren, and Ibrahim Tatlises. Frankly, I couldn't understand why he wasn't just selling this stuff on Ebay—the rent must be really expensive in this area, and I can't believe he had that many customers. I ended up buying six or seven things from him—there's no telling if he'll still be there when I get back.

But he wasn't the only one selling records in Istanbul. There's also a jazz shop in Tunel—at the very top of the musical instruments street—that now sells new records. Pretty sweet.

There are, of course, flea markets and other places to get vinyl in Istanbul, but these two places were noteworthy because they represented serious efforts by retailers to sell records to consumers—they wouldn't do that if they felt there were no market at all.

Back in the US, I noticed that even the Borders in Ann Arbor was selling records last year. And if Borders is doing it, that means records aren't only back, but that they've been back for a long while.

Indeed, they never left—DJs kept vinyl alive in the 90s. And now people who are tired of the digital crap are reviving the industry.

And I'll probably be doing some record buying in DC this weekend. But on which turntable will I play them? That's the only question that remains.

But when that's the biggest thing you have to worry about over the weekend, you're lucky.