It's a fair question. Though usually there's a not-so-subtle undertone of "what a greasy little hipster you must be," as if I walked into Urban Outfitters one day with an Amex Platinum and screamed "Outfit me! For the love of God, outfit me!"
People have weird imaginations. But I think I can sort of understand where it comes from, too.
For anyone over the age of 50, vinyl records conjure up memories of, well, being old. These people listened to vinyl back in the day because it's what they had, it's the medium that happened to be dominant at that time. Cassette and 8-track tapes were opportunistic pieces of junk and they mostly sounded like it, too, so people flocked to LPs. Until, that is, the mid-1980s gifted us with the CD and our first taste of digital sound, along with an AIDs epidemic and a second-term President with advanced Alzheimer's. What a time to be alive.
Most people under 30, to the extent that they think about vinyl at all, tend to look at it as some sort of strange affectation, like wearing a bowler hat or riding a Fixie or going around saying things like "ya know, when you really think about it, Trump and Sanders weren't all that different . . . "
Vinyl LPs come in lush packages that are more like mini-works of art than a mere recording medium. CDs are like office supplies: cheap-looking, plastic, and flimsy. And it's true, jewel cases break too easily; they always have. If you listen to music the way I do, it's only a matter of time before your CD cases look like so many broken splinters of clear plastic with paltry liner notes sticking out of every crack and orifice. Not a pleasant reality.
Vinyl, on the other hand, is beautiful. It's black as opposed to translucent--almost as though it couldn't be any more blacker, as some have said--and it comes in these big, heavyweight cardboard sleeves complete with artwork, liner notes, and sometimes (gasp!) the full lyrics to every track. Heck, sometimes they'll even throw in a cool poster or a digital download of the album, too. All this for around $17 to $30 brand-new--and used vinyl is often much cheaper.
If, however, you don't want to take my word for it, you can wade into the likely-never-to-be-settled Internet debate over which sounds better, vinyl (i.e., analog) sound versus CD or mp3 (i.e., digital) sound. Seriously, there are as many articles on the web that address this debate as there are articles for dropping 15 pounds in two days with "one weird trick."
Vinyl LPs automatically give your living space an authentic, "lived-in" look. So you don't feel quite as bad about eating baked beans right out of the can on your pilfered cinderblock furniture.
Buying and collecting vinyl means you can make friends with the cool, well-adjusted people who typically work in record stores, such as the good people at my personal fave Indy CD & Vinyl in Broad Ripple.
Who wouldn't want to get to know these folks?
No comments:
Post a Comment