Photo by Mark Hooper
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How Records Got Their Groove Back
By Bill Newcott, January & February 2010
As CDs fade away, there's a new vinyl answer
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"They lied to us, man," he said.
Flipping through old vinyl albums at a used-record shop, I did what
anyone does when a fellow human bares his soul: I ignored him.
"They said CDs would sound better," he persisted. "They
lied!" He rapped a vintage Ramsey Lewis album on the edge of the
bin, like a gavel, releasing that distinct scent of dust and
decomposing cardboard.
"I got rid of my record player. I let my records go. And they
never even bothered to bring back half of my old jazz albums. Not
half. It was like they hooked us, and then they
gutted us."
It was a spontaneous outburst, but the gist of it I've been
hearing for years among frequenters of the vinyl bins: despite the
advantages of compact disks (CDs) over vinyl—you'll never
hear a CD pop or click, and you can access any track
instantly—the supposed perfection of the format was overstated.
Of course, the companies were just as over-the-top about LPs.
Here's a quote from my vinyl copy of Tony [Bennett]'s
Greatest Hits, Volume III: "You can purchase this record
with no fear of its becoming obsolete in the future." Pioneer
audiophiles felt that way about Edison's cylinder phonograph of
the late 1800s and the 78-rpm shellac disks of the early 20th century.
And even as the "never obsolete" vinyl promise was being
made in the 1960s, guys in lab coats were dreaming up cassette tapes
and eight-track tape cartridges.
Then came the CD in the mid-1980s, and everyone knew that vinyl's
days were numbered. But like those ancient tiny mammals that predated
the dinosaurs—and then kept skittering around the feet of T.
rex and his pals—vinyl never completely disappeared:
throughout the '90s, hip-hop DJs spun vinyl disks, manipulating
the turntables by hand for musical effect.
Where to Get Records
Online
For used records, vinyl guru Michael Fremer
suggests GEMM.com, which directs you to online auctions and dealers.
For new vinyl, any large music retailer (Amazon, Borders, Barnes and
Noble, etc.) has access to just about everything out there. Check the
large collection of Capitol/EMI reissues,
including records by Frank Sinatra, Roxy Music, and The Beach Boys;
and Rhino records' albums by Chicago, Depeche Mode,
The Doors, and the Bee Gees (including an authentic red-flocked,
gold-print copy of their double album, Odessa).
Thrift Stores
Goodwill, Salvation Army, and
secondhand stores have bins brimming with castoff vinyl. Flipside:
There's no quality control, so the disks can be in awful
shape.
Used-Record Stores
Most cities have a bunch of
outlets, many of which make some effort to organize the musical
genres.
Yard Sales
Just look for the box too heavy to lift.
You might get the whole shebang for a couple of bucks.
—B.N.
Now record companies are making money from vinyl again: vinyl-record
sales soared 89 percent in 2008, while CDs, falling prey to Internet
downloads, continued to trudge down the road to extinction. Music
giant EMI has rereleased some 65 classic albums on vinyl, including
acts ranging from Frank Sinatra to the Beastie Boys. U2's newest
album (No Line on the Horizon), Bruce Springsteen's
latest (Working on a Dream), and Harry Connick Jr.'s
Your Songs have all done brisk vinyl business.
And it's not just a generational thing. Newer acts such as The
Killers and Ryan Adams are finding an LP audience as well, offering
vinyl and MP3-download versions of their latest releases as a single
package. In fact, whereas Borders and Best Buy stores have been
reducing their CD space, both retailers have installed new vinyl-LP
racks.
The Sound of Silence
It wasn't the sound that sold us on CDs—it was the absence
of it. Your first CD experience was probably a lot like mine. I was
working at a tabloid newspaper in Florida, and one day the publisher
called me into his office. "Siddown," he barked. As always,
I did as I was told. He just sat there staring at me, cigarette aloft
in one hand. Then, suddenly, the crashing opening chords of
Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien came barreling out at me
from two large speakers. I leaped to my feet, as if to escape. My boss
clapped his hands and laughed, sending ashes flying.
"It's the silence," he said gleefully. "A record
warns you something's gonna happen with all the noise it makes.
But this is a compact disk. When it's quiet, it's
damn quiet."
Maybe too quiet. Even after CDs nudged vinyl out the record-store door
in the late 1980s, enthusiasts stuck to their position that
vinyl's sound reproduction was ultimately more satisfying than
digital's. Warmer is the word used most frequently, and
Jason Boyd, who oversees vinyl-record production and sales for music
giant EMI, tried to explain it to me.
"The imperfections of the sound—the low ends—are
sonically appealing," Boyd says. "CD is most pristine. But
vinyl has the warm, full sound of the music. The cracks and the little
imperfections that pop up seem to enhance the music. It's a way of
experiencing music rather than just consuming
it."
Boyd is probably right. But here's my theory: it's the unique
imperfections of each vinyl record that make it irreplaceable. After
enough plays, a record becomes a fingerprint of your listening
experience. Just about everyone who owned the Beatles' White
Album wore the thing down to a nub. Your copy, like mine, is a
crackling mess through "Cry Baby Cry"—but then it
becomes a mint-condition collector's item the moment that
unlistenable jumble of sounds the Lads called "Revolution 9"
fades in.
Indeed, all of our records carry an indelible personal stamp: the skip
on your copy of The Dark Side of the Moon that results in
Roger Waters's repeating "Money!" over and
over…the holiday album you still play despite the damage it
sustained in that unfortunate 1962 Christmas-tree pine-needle
accident...the Shari Lewis record you kicked off the turntable while
you were dancing, so now Lamb Chop repeats herself, like Rain Man.
What to Play them On
New
For state-of-the-art players,
Stereophile editor Michael Fremer suggests websites such as
musicdirect.com and elusivedisc.com, where, for example, the very good
Pro-Ject Debut III turntable sells for around $349, including
cartridge. Cheaper turntables, which play through your CD amplifier,
sell for under $100 at big-box stores such as Target, Walmart, and
Kmart. Most also sell self-contained record players: Crosley, a name in audio since 1920, makes a line from
$79.95 to $249.95. Some have CD-recording hookups, but isn't that
cheating?
Used
Goodwill and Salvation Army are a budget-vinyl
lover's pals: for $35, I found the same model Fisher stereo I sold
at a yard sale a decade earlier. —B.N.
See Me, Feel Me
Even the nonlistening rituals of record ownership are burned into the
memories of everyone who ever had a collection. Need proof? Head down
to a music store and buy a record—most larger shops now have at
least a small vinyl section. The rest will come naturally: bring the
record home (on the way, I guarantee, you'll admire the cover
artwork). Now slip your thumbnail into the cellophane sheath, right at
the album's business end, and slide it along. Feel that flutter in
your stomach as the album opens? You're remembering what it's
like to access your music with a single, graceful stroke—instead
of peeling, stabbing, cutting, and finally biting your way into a CD
jewel case. Now slide out the inner sleeve. There she is: the proud,
black thing of beauty, her label winking at you through the
sleeve's center hole. As you extract the disk from the sleeve,
you'll find you haven't forgotten how to hold it safely: your
thumb at the ridge, the label resting on your fingers. If you're
lucky enough to still have your turntable, you'll deftly center
the record on the spindle. Best of all, the disk won't hop into a
drawer and disappear into a box, like a CD. It will stay right there
in plain view, singing to you at a steady 33 1/3 revolutions per
minute.
Then there's the structure of a two-sided album. In the old days,
records were programmed in two acts: Side One and Side Two. Someone
who's never flipped an LP would be mightily puzzled over the lyric
at the end of Side One on the Carpenters' fourth album, A Song
for You: "We'll be right back /After we go to the
bathroom." On my favorite album, Electric Light Orchestra's
Eldorado, Jeff Lynne ends Side One on a chord progression
that is left unresolved until Side Two.
Your Song
In my world, digital and vinyl have found a way to coexist: when
I'm on the subway, or walking on a bustling city sidewalk, the
slightly shrill digital music flowing through my earbuds seems
appropriate. At home, however—where I'm bathed in the warmth
of family and familiar surroundings—the sounds from my old
record player seem to float from room to room, filling every corner
with aural incense.
"Vinyl will never be mainstream again, but it's a growing
niche," says Michael Fremer, senior contributing editor for
Stereophile magazine. (He owns 15,000 vinyl records.)
"When a former vinyl listener reconnects, he or she says, 'I
remember that sound. That's what I'm missing!'
And a new generation is discovering that vinyl sounds better and
represents tunes sequenced as the artist wishes, rather than as a
series of random events.
"I doubt kids will look back in 50 years and say, 'I remember
when I downloaded that!' The forward-looking young people are
going for vinyl editions of their important music."
The End
Those of us who fell for the Great Lie will never fully recover. My
distraught friend from the used-record store is right: we'll spend
the rest of our days trying to re-create our old collections, Ancient
Mariners roaming the earth, our MP3 players slung about our necks like
albatrosses.
But there will be the inevitable reunions with long-lost LP friends,
the rush of anticipation when the needle hits that groove, and the
exquisite moment when the music plays, warm and full, punctuated with
the pops and crackles of passing time.
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