Vinyl Exam

Indie Pixie - a great article on NYC record stores. some great photos, and even a recipe for recycled vinyl bowls. the best part is the stream of good info in the comments section.

Out Walking - A great article on the multi-sensory experience of buying vinyl LP’s back in the day. Some very valid points on why working to find music makes it that much better.

More Info -> LINK!

That was Then

I should preface this by saying that I picked up all John Cougar’s records on vinyl. When I was trying to figure out which one to do first, I kinda just picked the one that made the most entries into my life. This is probably the one. I first found this album back when it came out and the singles hit the air. I bought the album, and found that, like alot of other albums, there were some great songs here that would never make the airwaves. Although that happened alot back then, it seems to be a rarity now. This album was a great one to rediscover through various stages of growing up. Listening again, I remember thinking “Thundering Hearts” was probably one of the greatest motorcycle songs ever, next to Billy Idol’s “Blue Highway.” When I got my first motorcycle, these were the songs that ran through my head when I was out in the middle of nowhere. “China Girl” is still one of the coolest songs ever written. I could go on and on about this album, but out of respect for the privacy of others (who might not want to have anyone know that they have ever been associated with me, I’ll stop now)

This is Now

I bought this record in a pile of others for around a buck off ebay. I still can’t get over what a cheap hobby this is. Anyway. Playing this again on a real HiFi, the sound is much better than I remember. With more than 20 years of listening experience since this album first came out, I now realize why John Cougar was and is such a big time player in the game. This album is a great recording of great performances of great songs. This album came out during the 40 minute album era, which means that there was no room for fluff.

The Jury Says

This album is better than I gave it credit for when I first heard it. Now that I can actually understand the craftsmanship of the songs, I think John Cougar is cooler now than I did back then. And back then, I thought he was pretty dang cool.

When cassettes landed (I think I was around 7 when I first started using them daily) the first thing I did was devise a hideous method for making my own mix tapes. By that time, I was a serious radio listener, but I was too impatient to wait for my favorite songs to come on. I was also too broke and too without car to go shopping for 45’s as often as I wanted to, so I settled for low tech.

I would borrow my dad’s tape recorder, and put the microphone up to one of the speakers on our home stereo, and when my favorite songs came on, I would record it. I would then pray to god that no one made any noise. This was impossible to ask from a house full of noisy Chicanos. Most of my tapes were littered with people in different phases of yelling.

This worked out fine for many years, until my dad brought home the family’s very first recording cassette deck. He showed me how to record records onto it, and how to adjust the levels, and I was a mix taping fool.

Sometime around junior high, everyone I knew stopped buying vinyl and buying pre recorded cassettes.. Not me. For the stuff I was into, having vinyl on hand to make mix tapes was something I could not have done without.

I was officially a slave to thinking up the best mixes of song I could come up with that would fit on a 30 minute (then, alter, 45 minute) side. I would make lists, calculate times, and dream of these things. When you were making a mix tape for a friend, it got even crazier. In those cases, there was a message being conveyed. Figuring out how to get that message across took some serious effort. Just the planning could take days.

The addiction to making and listening to mix tapes, 60 or 90 minutes of a perfect life, kept me from making the jump from vinyl to cassette. Unfortunately, it did nothing to keep me away from CD’s

For an insane number of years (something like fifteen) I have hung out with Marshall Green . We have always held different posts in the whole music thing. He, the sound and recording engineer and audio purist, me, the song guy.

I have always had a passion for the song, and the rest, at least to me, was fluff. Sure, I was aware of all the technical aspects of music, but the idea of it just seemed to be tedious and non sensical.

After all these years of ignoring that the whole audiophile thing existed, I stopped by Marshall’s to do our Weekly Radio Show and he played a copy of “Hotel California” for me on vinyl. At that point, there was some sort of convergence, and I finall GOT what was going on .

Being the early adopter of all things technical, I had not messed with vinyl after CD’s were introduced. I immediately traded in all my albums for CD’s, and had not given it a second thought for more than twenty years. Suddenly, I was having second thoughts. I was around seventeen when CD’s were first available to people my age, and I had, with shameful blind faith, bought the lie. It was new, it was digital, it was all computer based, so obviously, it was better.

We were only fourteen years from the year 2000. By then, we will have our own space cars. Hell, we will be living in space. How retarded would that look to live in space with a turntable. The final frontier had a few promises. Compact Discs an d Tang. I jumped on board.

That evening at Marshall’s taught me a few things. Given good equipment to start with, CD’s don’t compare to vinyl. No matter ow you sliced it, vinyl just sounded better. There are a million reasons for this, but i will leave that for another story.

I then began to wonder. If Hotel California sounded so much better on vinyl, maybe some other albums from my past might sound as good. I started looking on ebay, and found that albums were going for a buck each. I stocked up on all the albums I have missed.

To my surprise, they not only sounded better than I remembered, they were better. I spent the greater part of the last ten years as a music critic. Not for the hot and up and coming bands, but for the internet established “indie market.” Protools and its ilk had armed a nation not only with the tools to make CD’s in their basements, but with the idea that what they created would be be good. Most of this stuff found its way into my mailbox. It soured me for years to come. Now, after listening to these albums with all that experience, I have gained much needed clarity.