I learned from my mistake of buying the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros‘ album Here as a download. I was in such a hurry to get vacation music together and just knew this album was perfect summer music (and it is, like being at a great outdoor concert on a summer evening,) that I didn’t look at my options.
But after I returned, I saw that I could have had the vinyl and digital download for the same price. Doh.
So when Fiona’s new album came out I made sure to buy the actual record from World Records with the digital download for only $7 more than the average cost of the album.
I’m a huge fan of vinyl, and not even for the technical reasons others site about sound quality- though I’m sure that’s true. It’s just that I love nothing more than making a moment by playing records just like when I was a girl with my Duran Duran 45s on a record player in a candy cane striped box. My first songs to own were all vinyl. There was a time when people said, “Want to come over and listen to records?”
I want to hear that again. I want to make time to put it on the turntable and set the needle and listen. Nothing transports me like this. It requires a little time, being somewhat still (especially if you’re listening in a house on piers.) I think of my mother’s Herb Alpert collection that I inherited, my brother’s Sonny and Cher 45, and all of the read along story lps we had. This was before I found a transistor radio under the front seat of my dad’s Ford LTD . Before all of the excitement of turning it on just as my favorite song came on. When I was a little girl that was something like Eddy Rabbitt.
Pretty soon it was all about boom boxes, mixed tapes, and Columbia House.
I have a JVC player from the late eighties that I picked up at a Goodwill years ago. It was never state of the art, but it plays on, only needing a new belt twice. When I finally had the chance to put The Idler Wheel on the turntable last night, it was so worth the wait, especially for the percussion- heavy, off- broadway sound. I don’t think my husband could have tolerated it were it not just so cool to listen to a new record.
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