I’m regressing. For the past several years I have resolutely continued to buy CDs, even though I very rarely play them – I just rip them to my home server and stream them from there (plus load the MP3s to the 128gb removable SD card in my Blackberry (suck it, Crapple fanboys!) so I can listen to them at work). I know I could just buy the MP3s and save myself some money, but I like the tangibility of CDs. I’ve also never bought into the idea of ‘buying’ zeroes and ones that sit on ‘the cloud’ somewhere (here’s a secret: there is no cloud – it’s just someone else’s computer); if I pay for something I want to be able to hold it in my hand. But all that said and done, CDs are increasingly not my first choice of medium – that would be vinyl.
I’ve always had a few records (not a lot – maybe 100 or so albums and a handful of 12″ singles (from the ‘good old days’ when the 12″ mix was basically just the same as the 7″ version but with 4 bars in the middle vamped for a extra 2 or 3 minutes, and not some unrecognizable mangling by a ‘name’ DJ…)) but hadn’t given any of it a spin for several years. Mainly because my turntable (‘gramophone’) was languishing in a cabinet in the living room (along with my 300-CD Pioneer Elite autochanger, which is similarly underutilized) fighting the TV for attention and my records weren’t easily to hand. But a couple of months ago I moved into a new house that had an extra room that I didn’t have any other use for (I think it’s officially the ‘formal living room’ – presumably only for use when the vicar or the police come round, if my parents have taught me anything), so I decided to turn it into a ‘media room’. I dug my old hi-fi stand out and stuck the turntable on it, along with my aging amp and a Sonos Connect, and I was all set.
I started out just spinning my old vinyl, and getting all nostalgic. I quickly realized that I did seem to have more Hawkwind than one person can reasonably justify (although my original copy of The Space Ritual still sounds excellent!), and a lot of early Zappa/Mothers, but hearing Roy Harper, James Varda, and even The Enid again has been thoroughly satisfying. And Walking The Ghost Back Home by The Bible still sounds as gorgeous today as it did when I first bought it in 1986 – especially when I cranked it up to the point that my kids were telling me to turn it down (who’s old now, eh?). I’m still mustering up the courage to re-visit Cyndi Lauper‘s She’s So Unusual in the hope of discovering what the hell I was thinking, but I stand by the Bowie, Lou Reed, and Dylan.
Up to that point, I hadn’t really considered buying anything else on vinyl – and certainly not new releases. What’s always put me off is that I want to be able to rip the music I buy to my PC/phone. CDs are easy to rip, but vinyl not so much. But then I noticed that Amazon’s AutoRip feature (which basically gives you free MP3 downloads of (most) CDs that you buy from Amazon) also applied to vinyl. So if I buy a vinyl album from Amazon (and I rarely buy music from anywhere else, given that the nearest physical record store is 25 miles away) I also get the MP3s and don’t have to worry about ripping them myself. Sweet! Actually, several of the albums I have bought recently also include a ‘free download code’ anyway – which is excellent, as I have long been a believer that you should be paying for the music not the medium. In fact, the vinyl release of the latest Mew album (+/-) came with a free CD and a download code, so kudos to them.
But is it worth it? Why buy what is an incredibly cumbersome, delicate, and inconvenient format? Well, at the risk of sounding like some hipster bore, music sounds better on vinyl. Really. Even to my old, decrepit ears that have deteriorated through years of listening to music way too loud. Just to prove it, I got an album that I have on both vinyl and CD, cued them up to the same point, and then repeatedly flipped my amp input between the CD player and the turntable. And yes, the vinyl was more satisfying – everything sounds cleaner and more precise, with better separation between the instruments. It’s just more natural. (And this isn’t even on a good record deck.) You may disagree, but you’re wrong.
The sound quality aside, though, there’s just something uniquely satisfying about vinyl. Maybe it’s because it is more inconvenient, but you have to consciously consume music on vinyl. You can’t just casually hit a button and it miraculously plays; you have to dig it off the shelf, get it out of the sleeve, put it on the turntable, wipe it with your anti-static cloth/brush, and then carefully drop the needle onto it. And then get up 20-25 minutes later to flip it over. If you’re going to go to all of this trouble, you have to really want to listen to the album, and as a result I think you commit to actually listening to it, as opposed to it just being background noise. You also almost have to listen to an entire side at a time, from first track to last – none of this skipping the ‘duff’ tracks – which forces you to ‘enjoy’ it the way the artist intended, which is no bad thing (especially if you listen to music that is created as a unit, rather than just a collection of songs).
Maybe it’s a nostalgia thing, but there’s also something to be said for getting a new vinyl album and cueing it up for the first time. I remember going into town to buy records as a kid, then walking several miles back home (or to school) in eager anticipation, just waiting to be able to hear it. I find I’m doing more-or-less the same thing now. Even though the vinyl often comes with AutoRip, I’m not listening to it until the physical album turns up (2 days after ordering, thanks to Amazon Prime), and am then listening to it first on vinyl (while admiring the sleeve/artwork), instead of just streaming the MP3s when I place my order and then wondering why I bought the vinyl when that turns up. I guess it makes the music less disposable. It certainly makes buying a new album more of an event…
There’s one more reason why vinyl is superior to CD (and certainly to MP3). Again, this is to do with clarity – but not how you might think. If you have a vinyl copy of Sinead O’Connor‘s excellent debut The Lion and the Cobra, take a look at the (slightly blurred) photo of her on the cover. On her hand you can see that she’s written the word “Purse” in blue pen. Now look at the CD – in its reduced form, you can barely see any mark on her hand, let alone read what it says. And don’t even bother trying to squint at the thumbnail ‘artwork’ that iTunes gives you… “Yeah, but that doesn’t exactly affect the quality of the music!” you may argue. Well, maybe not. Or maybe it does. Maybe it shows that for all her strong, feminist image (at least when she first burst onto the scene in her skinhead attire, in the video for Mandinka), Ms. O’Connor was still just a forgetful young girl who needed to remind her self to take her (female standard issue) purse out with her to the photo shoot. Which puts the music in a more interesting context – and you only get that with the vinyl!
So until 8-tracks make a comeback, I’m going to carry on buying vinyl, and enjoying the clearer sound and better artwork that comes with it. Hipster and be damned!
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