An ode to vinyl

I stopped buying CDs about two years ago. Ever since, it has taken genuine consideration and something very special to make me even think about dropping the cash for one.

New music is so accessible anymore that it just feels like a chore to shop for it.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m all for supporting the bands who make the music we love. Buy their music, collect their merchandise, give them gas money when they’re in the middle of touring and have to drive to Florida by tomorrow afternoon. 

It’s just that I have found a new love – the sweet sound of spinning vinyl.

For the past few years, record hunting has been both my obsession and the thorn in my side. Finding essential LPs can make you, and the prices can break you – but is it worth it in the end?

You bet.

For someone like me who is all-too-stuck in the past, vinyl is the perfect solution to finding those rare recordings in their original form. Who wants to hear Otis Redding compressed into an MP3 when they can hear the depth of his soul in the warmth of the vinyl?

And what attachment can you have with a CD? I think I would be relatively excited to find some of those old gems from my formative high school years, but more so for the music than the physical disc itself.

I’m pretty sure they’re shoved somewhere in my closet back home.
My vinyl, however? I devise plans in my head as to how I would rescue my crates full of heavy LPs if my building were to catch on fire. 

While it isn’t necessarily the most reasonable format for a generation on the go, it is exactly what we need to slow us down and to appreciate music once again for what it is rather than as background noise to a busy day.

There’s a connection there that can’t be replicated with your iPod, as you slap on a playlist of your party jams and hit “shuffle.” 

Just like Rob in the movie “High Fidelity,” I can look through my records and remember when and where I was when I bought them. I find X-Ray Spex and remember that little shop in the Notting Hill district of London and the cute old man that sold the record to me.

I see my two copies of “Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor and remember buying it for the first time back home in Akron, Ohio but insisting on buying a second copy during my trip to Chicago last fall.

Vinyl takes effort. It takes devotion.

It takes a true lover of music in its purest, unaltered form to collect and dig through dusty crates in search of that record that’s been evasive for so long.

But once that record meets your hands and then the needle, and the beautiful sounds of your favorite songs waft your way, you’ll understand – the work is worth it.