Essay: Vinyl – A Rekindled Love Affair

 If you haven’t noticed, I’m here to tell you that vinyl is back in a big way.  Yes, if you threw away that old turntable, you made a grave mistake since many new releases are not only available on CD but also on old-school record.  Vinyl versions of your favorite new releases may be slightly harder to find than CD or MP3 versions but they can be found if you know where to look. Often online retailers like Amazon are great places to find them.  It’s evident that vinyl has made a big return because records have popped up in some surprising places. The Barnes & Noble location across from the ABC building here in Manhattan recently started stocking a few choice L.P.s in its music department.  At Best Buy you can get "Chinese Democracy" on vinyl if you so wish.  The fact that records are seemingly returning to the big box retailers is significant. From the time they originally began to phase out vinyl, sometime in the early nineties, until just recently, if you insisted on having vinyl, you had to search for it in local specialty stores.  These places usually attracted hipsters who were “too cool for digital” or hip-hop and dance enthusiasts (usually D.J.s) who needed something to spin on their “wheels of steel.” So why is this old format making a return?  Perhaps it’s a knee-jerk reaction by a chosen few.  It’s a backlash to the recent notion that music is (1.) free and (2.) disposable.  Vinyl is neither of those things.  It’s a heavy-duty physical product and a reminder that music means something.  Listening to music should be a true experience and unlike any other format, vinyl provides a unique experience.  Not every album released is worthy however of this said “vinyl experience.”  Years of dealing with CDs and MP3s have taught us that it is easy to skip a song we don’t like.  These are formats for the impatient.  Listening to an album on vinyl is a commitment.  I don’t know about any of you, but I have always had trouble lining the needle up to those supposed gaps between songs on a record.  Once you put the needle down at the beginning of a record, you are essentially making the pledge to make it through to the end of the side.  If there’s filler somewhere in the middle of that side, it is difficult to avoid.  Thus, only the finest albums are worthy of such treatment.   This brings me to the personal reason I have chosen to write about this subject.  I’ve found myself strangely sucked into this revival.  Perhaps it began in April of 2008 when Elvis Costello released his album "Momofuku," originally exclusively on vinyl.  (Regular readers of this blog might remember that I reviewed the album and later declared it to be my favorite album of the year.) This planted a seed in my head. A few months ago, I discovered that for some reason it was cheaper to buy Smashing Pumpkins’ classic album, “Siamese Dream” on vinyl than it was to buy it on CD. (I’ve had it on CD since in 1993 release and it has always been one of my favorites.)  I decided that because it is a classic that it was indeed “vinyl worthy” and picked it up along with vinyl copies of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” and “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys.  Looking back, in the original vinyl age, I didn’t listen to particularly cool music.  Much of the music I chose to listen to in then, I don’t want to listen to now. I wish I’d been listening to the Clash.  I wish I had been listening to the Police.  I wish I’d been listening to punk.  I wish I’d been listening to early hip-hop.  I wasn’t.  At the time I originally collected records I was a pop-minded kid.  By the time my musical tastes matured, I was onto fuzzy-sounding cassettes and then CDs.  So, listening to “Siamese Dream,” on vinyl in particular, was like listening to it again for the first time.  Here was an album from the digital age seemingly reinvented for an analog technology.  On vinyl, the album’s sixty-two minutes are spread across four sides.  Having to turn the record over every three or four songs trains you to treat every moment like it is precious.  Not only that, but the music sounds different than the CD.  It runs a little faster so everything is in an ever-so-slightly different key. It is sharper sounding as well.  The opening chords to the Pumpkins’ song “Rocket” drill through you with expert precision, making you love every second.  Somehow, “Today” sounds brighter and more uplifting this way.  All of the textural elements during the softer sections of “Hummer” seem to pop better on record than they do on CD.  A few years ago, I was listening to the “Garden State” soundtrack with my father.  “The Only Living Boy In New York” by Simon & Garfunkel came on and he asked me if it was a new version.  I said that it wasn’t.  He said it didn’t sound right and proceeded to pull out his vinyl copy of the album “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”  He found the song on that record and played it, declaring with satisfaction, “Now that sounds right.”  For listeners whose ears are trained by vinyl, it has a much crisper, treble-heavy sound.  It sounds earthier and more natural.  A needle reading the grooves of a record is a much more elementary mechanical process than a laser reading a CD.  If you turn your stereo all the way down while you are playing a CD and you put your ear next to your player, the most you’ll probably hear is the dull hum of the disc spinning.  If you do the same with a record, you’ll still be able to hear that needle quietly squeezing the music out of the grooves.  That’s not to say that one format is better than the other.  CDs still may give you slightly better sound without glitches and pops and are indeed more portable, but both formats have their benefits.  CDs may generally be my true format of choice but if I’m in my apartment, listening to a classic album, a record provides a level of enjoyment a CD just can’t necessarily deliver.   Much to my own surprise, I am not done with collecting vinyl.I just went and bought vinyl copies of both Dinosaur Jr.’s latest album "Farm" and the self-titled album by The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – two recent albums that are definitely “vinyl worthy.” Pricing for vinyl these days can come at a wide range.Albums now can now typically cost anywhere from ten to thirty dollars.For those laughing at the notion that a record could cost so much, today’s”180-gram vinyl” is supposedly superior to the older material.I keep debating what my next vinyl purchases will be. I’ve toyed with getting all of the albums by the Pixies, Radiohead and A Tribe Called Quest in the format, but have resisted taking the plunge. I would imagine Liz Phair’s "Exile In Guyville"  would probably sound great on vinyl! Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” doesn’t seem to be in regular release on vinyl at this point, but thanks to a recent re-release you can get Pearl Jam’s “Ten.” “3 Feet High and Rising” by De La Soul probably sounds great on vinyl but I haven’t found it. I have however seen that “De La Soul Is Dead” is available. It’s funny. This format is back, but not fully.  Only certain artists have released their entire discographies this way.  Others have only chosen to release a few titles. With Smashing Pumpkins, I’ve only readily seen “Siamese Dream” and “Adore.”  I’d love to find a vinyl version of “Pisces Iscariot,” partly because “Starla” is one of the band’s best songs and partly so I can get a bigger version of that album cover to finally figure out whether that picture is of someone’s back, a sideways mouth or something else all together.  Over the years, indie rock has continued to embrace vinyl.  The split seven-inch has been a way for two like-minded artists to release music together.  Recently, Superchunk released their new, excellent single, “Crossed Wires/Blinders” on vinyl only.  (It can be purchased from the Merge Records website.)  Like many releasing vinyl these days, for those missing the digital aspect, they have chosen to include a digital download code with purchase so you can still listen to the tracks on your ipod. Bundling isn’t uncommon.  Many bands package CD versions of their albums with their vinyl to give the best of both worlds! Wilco did just that with their latest apprpriately-titled album, “Wilco (The Album.)”   Vinyl’s resurgence is not the result of pointless nostalgia. (Pointless nostalgia is Cheap Trick releasing their new album, “The Latest” on limited edition 8-track! That’s like a movie studio deciding to suddenly release a movie on beta-max along with DVD and Blu-ray!)  The cassette and 8-track should be dead forever.  This isn’t so with the L.P.  Yes, it’s a clunky, old technology, but in many ways it did things right.  In these times of diminishing physical products, records still remind us of the way things used to be.  While not every release is “vinyl worthy,” those that are, are true classics!