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I've spent an hour or three every day for the last few days rummaging through the 10p bargain 7" records downstairs at the Music and Video Exchange on Smallbrook Queensway, and I've found some real gems.
I love the format - I'd forgotten how much. One song per side, bigger than a CD but not so big as to be unwieldly, and a great, punchy and crisp sound when played on my turntable. Vinyl doesn't sound particularly better or worse than CDs to my ears -- but it does sound very different. It has a different quality to it - all clicks, pops and analogue warmth aside.
I like getting up to change records - particularly singles. I like rifling through them. I like putting them through the sink like a load of washing up (lukewarm water only, of course -- and rinse thoroughly before drip drying), to get the real encrusted dirt off. Does them no harm and they usually come up a treat.
I enthusiastically like songs as 45rpm 7" records that I wouldn't listen to in my digital collection -- and I'd throw the CD away if I had it. You can get away with real twee on vinyl. I have favourite singles that aren't favourite songs.
It smells cool. It feels great. Only one problem - none of the hundred or so tracks I've had on high rotate for the past few days have been showing up in my Mog, my Last.FM or my iLike accounts.
But with these 10p per record bargains, you have to wonder about the value of 79p a track downloads. No smell. No feel. No picture sleeve. No second-hand market. No washing up to do.
I win the lottery, and I replace as many of my songs in iTunes as I possibly can with the original 7". And I'm getting a second turntable and a mixer for the living room. Not so I can be a dancefloor DJ, but so that I can relive the experience of radio as it was when I first got into it 20 years ago -- almost to the day.
And why not? I'm playing the same tracks this afternoon as I was back then... and I probably have no fewer listeners than I did at that little fledgling station out in Manukau City (Oasis 94FM - now thankfully defunct) or on the graveyard shift at bFM.
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There's no understandin' some things. Why are they not better known? Its criminal that someone as talented as these two should labor in ananomity.
i'd heard of them but not actually heard them play until i was skipping through the BBC Glastonbury highlights from '05 or 04 looking for something, i stopped to see who it was and i was just stunned. i'll definitely be checking them out next time i see 'em on a bill, rather than mooching about the greenfields or whatever it was i was doing at the time...
surely they're not that anonymous now they've been briefly attached to the media juggernaut that is Letterman?
Jess Horrible and I saw them play a few months ago. One of the BEST shows I have ever seen. Rodrigo is good, but Gabriela is incredible.
Actually a self-titled record, this is the seventh release from longtime REM collaborator Scott McCaughey. The album's nickname comes not only from the cover but the five gun related songs throughout. It might better be called the Anti-Gun album.
McCaughey drafts talented friends like Wilco, the Decemberists' frontman Colin Meloy, John Wesley Harding and REM's Peter Buck, and makes a really solid country rock record that has a real masculinity that can only really be described as laddishness -- though not the kind you associate with lads' magazines. There is something decidely Beatlesque about the arrangements, and something pub-chat about the lyrics (though, this being an American record, perhaps lockerroom-chat might be more appropriate).
It's good, solid songwriting coupled with off-beat lyrics and good solid playing by people who are so comfortable with their craft that they can just lean back and have fun with it.
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God! I used to live in that place 6 or 7 years ago, and then ebay came along....
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=001&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&viewitem=&item=110071368221&rd=1&rd=1
Vinyl doesn’t sound particularly better or worse than CDs to my ears—but it does sound very different. It has a different quality to it – all clicks, pops and analogue warmth aside.
I feel exactly the same way!!
hurray for vinyl record lovers! Big Up the Wax Massive! great post. i, too, enjoy the 2-sided record format, from the tactile to the auditory. 7" and 10" records are just so convenient and portable and sound wonderful whether played through a home hi-fi or a huge club system. i like that you clarify that it's not about which sounds better, vinyl or digital, it's that they sound different. different people have different tastes and will prefer different things.