Vinyl

Itunes has become the bane of my musical appreciation. I truly miss the days of surfing the download lists on Kazaa and Napster, of using toothpaste to fix a scratched CD. Really, I can't even imagine spending enough time with a particular album to wear it out (this is, of course, taking place in an imaginary world where someone might still consider listening to music on a CD). Instead, I spend my evenings pointing and clicking, playing the with idea of music. I will 'buy' (interpret these quotations as you may) tens of albums in a night, all painstakingly created by people who hang on each key change, who scribbled lyrics into their little black notebooks with the hopes of sharing something special with me. And yet, while I may download some music because they sound like some other band that sounds like some other guy that I listened to a couple of times because he was in this other band I used to listen to all the time, I will probably never feel what they intended when they spent to years pushing the envelope to give me something perspective-changing to listen to. It's a shame. It really is. My Itunes library has become a graveyard, a mass-storage device of musicals untold.

And yet as the gluttonous, tag-teamed hands of technology and American culture tighten their choke-hold on my musical integrity, I've found one defense. I had to travel back in time a few decades to a time where four songs were the size of a frisbee. Yep, we're talking the recent Urban Outfitted fake glasses wearing, indie child of the 90's phenomenon: the record player. Cliché? Yep, unfortunately. But screw that. Finally, I found a form I simply HAVE to respect. The physical nature of a turntable playing a record is rather beautiful, really, when compared to the tedious scrolling of that insidious little bar at the top of my itunes window.

I can sit and watch the needle of my record player slowly work its way to the middle of the vinyl, moving faster and faster as the rounds grow shorter and shorter. But more importantly, I can listen with respect as the sounds of the needle on vinyl remind me of the buzzing of vocal chords, the static of a buzzing amp. I can hear the reverberations, the tiny scratches in the silence remind me that music is being made in my very bedroom.

And then there is of course, the fact that there is no getting around the practice of searching out and buying a record. It humbles me to hand over dollar bills in exchange for the privilege of hearing someone's story. Consequently, I may never have 4197 songs or 419 albums to listen to on my beloved record player, but that is probably a good thing. So hears to you, Neon Indian, Dirty Projectors, Cloud Cult and the like; you may still never ever be listened to by me, but at least I don't have to feel so dirty anymore for using you like that :)

Things I should have included in this article but didn't:

-The added fun of listening to bands who existed when it was normal to listen to music on a record player.

-The metaphorical meaning of handling records (music) with the physical and emotional care with which they deserve (This didn't make the cut simply for the fact that I has already gone sappy and cliché too many times in this little article).

-Shameless plug for my friend's blog where he records and reviews his record player endeavors as his collection grows at www.seanconned.blogspot.com. Waaaiiit...