Imagine No Possessions: My Vinyl Year

Hi. First things first: I have no claims to make about vinyl sounding better, or warmer, or whatever, than CDs or cassettes or iPods or whathaveyou. That's not why I'm interested in it.

Second things second: I'm not alone in being interested in it. As is well established: vinyl is having a moment. More than a moment. I mean, here’s what’s on sale at Target:

My gut reaction to that is to cringe--but why? I mean, a world where A Love Supreme can end up in your shopping cart along with toilet paper and a family-sized jar of Skippy seems like not so bad a world.

But then, of course, if you buy that record at Target, one thing you’re doing is not buying it somewhere else. Like, for instance, a record store.

This got me thinking. See, I got a turntable recently.

Which is not to say I’m new to vinyl. I’m just new to owning a turntable. They’re expensive and delicate and—in my younger years when I was always broke and moved around a lot—a turntable seemed like just one more thing. But I always bought records—usually because that was the only way to get my hands on songs I wanted to hear. Here are some old favorites:

 What I would do was buy these, dub them onto blank tapes, and then stow the records away safely.

I don’t believe that any of those are on 7-inch records because the makers believed the sound was better, or warmer, or whatever. It was just the most viable option at the time. Cassette singles never gained a huge amount of traction, and music wasn’t online yet.

And of course it’s all online now. As is everything. And by everything, I don’t just mean other types of media and entertainment, but I mean our lives. For a brief while there, it seemed the internet helped us better organize and facilitate the activities of our flesh-and-blood existence. But we're past that, and any healthy person should be at least a little conflicted about it.

This is where my renewed interest in vinyl is probably not too different from anyone else’s. A significant part of the reason I like it is: It's not my phone. The convenience of streaming is in many ways wonderful, but there’s no question that something is lost. Album artwork, for one. I mean artwork larger than a thumbnail. Moreover, albums. Until very recently, the default “Play” button on Spotify played songs at random. Also, the artists know all too well that they are better able to put food on their table if you buy their album rather than stream it. But the primary appeal, for me, is about getting my hands on an actual object. And this is where I will claim that when I put on a record, the sound has a different presence. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that I picked out a record, carefully slipped it from its sleeve, set the turntable in motion, lowered the needle. It’s all just a bit more tactile. The song begins, and there’s a vague satisfaction that I did this. I got my hands on that machinery and put it to work.

The record begins to play, and you settle into it. The first song plays, then the next. And you let it play. It seems to be a way of slowing down, almost.

That all sounds nice. But then there's this other thing happening, I think.

I know I mean it when I say I love the tactile aspect of records. Also, I have to admit that I like having things. 

Streaming changed music from a "good" into a "service." Once a month I get an email indicating my Spotify account has auto-renewed: i.e., continued access to pretty much all recorded music, available whenever, wherever. I shrug and delete the email. How odd that this does nothing for me.

But the thrill of peeling the thin, clear plastic wrap from a single new record...that gets those pleasure chemicals in the brain a-firing. I bought a thing and now it's mine. There's no getting around the underlying capitalist impulse here: Keep buying stuff, it makes the world go 'round.

Speaking of that: Back to Target. Target serves a purpose, I suppose. If there's a hipper and more enlightened place to buy toilet paper, let me know in the comments. But here's why I'm writing all of this: I had this thought that I should take the "all hail tactile things" zeitgeist and underlying "dumb impulse to shop" feelings to their logical conclusion: I should at least shop well. 

And so: I decided to visit a different record store each month for a year and, at each store, purchase at least one record. So that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to write about it here.

Disclaimers: Writing a blog that is partially about taking arms against living life online is...yeah, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Whatever. Also, is this whole thing a silly hobby for someone with too much time and money? Prolly. But there are worse things you can do with your time and money.

And so we begin.