Round and Round

Back to where you were in the past

I am anything but a technophobe, but I do take the time to look at tech and question its value, or its suitability to a specific task. Yes, I still wonder whether MS Word or LibreOffice are really a step forward from WordPerfect, and yes, I state flatly that Slack is one of the more horrid interfaces ever developed.

Last week though I was shopping in Vancouver, for books, and for records. In fact I bought CDs, but was immediately conscious that the record stores today are mostly into vinyl. That hunch was backed by data from Statista, that shows that records are now outselling CDs.

I’d like to think that what’s happening is that people are starting to appreciate that the algorithmic selection of streams of tunes just isn’t as satisfying as sitting down and listening to an entire album by one artist, in the order that the artist intended it to be.

Perhaps more critically is that streams on the Internet are by their nature ephemeral and quickly forgotten. The physical act of going into a store, choosing an album or CD, and then taking it home is just so different from having Spotify toss a random song at you. In particular, the act of peeling off the shrink wrap, reading the liner notes, and then inserting your CD into a player (or LP onto a turntable) remains so much more satisfying, and builds a real connection between the artist and the person playing the disc.

I should note here that I was an early adopter of LimeWire, and the subsequent on-line music platforms including Pirate Bay. And as much as I revelled in all of the downloads, I’ve also been mindful that the musicians weren’t getting paid for their work. And, to be honest, a lot of the thousands of songs on my hard drive have never even been listened to.

They had no value to me.

So last week I found a great Black Friday deal, and bought my first turntable in at least a couple of decades. Basically I went for the cheapest turntable that came from a reputable brand name. I’ll admit that the Audio-Technica LP60XBT is pretty lightweight. In years gone by I would have snickered at such a plastic item, but I’m betting that technology has improved since the days when the Technics 1200 was the go-to for every disc jockey.

In any event, it at least has Bluetooth, and it plays the discs well enough for my needs.

And the first disc played, and the actual reason for buying it? It’s an album that I owned many years ago, and whose opening few bars I can actually still hear in my mind. When the late, great Al Neil opens up with Thelonius Monk’s “Ruby my dear” it’s like every musical memory coming back to me. It sweeps me away.

And of course the moment that I laid Side One onto the turntable was also the moment when I realised that I also needed a record brush to remove dust from the disc…

What I’m understanding is that just as buying actual paper books builds some kind of personal relationship with what I’m reading - and this is also why the death of newspapers bothers me so much - my appreciation for, and understanding of music is so very much stronger when I own and play a physical CD or record.