I went record shopping yesterday, having finally bought a preamp for Tracie’s dad’s record player that’s been collecting dust in our apartment for over a year. I had a few LP’s that I had bought last spring at Record Revolution when we were in Cleveland for engagement photos. Because it was raining, we took a bunch of pictures inside the store, so I bought a Rodney Dangerfield LP and a copy of Armed Forces, because I felt like we should buy something even though it wasn’t Record Store Day.
I don’t know anything about collecting records—or for that matter, music in general—but I have to admit, it sounds different listening to something on vinyl as opposed to say, listening to something on an iPod. Or at least it feels different. To Me. There’s a used book/record shop not far from our house that has boxes and boxes of unorganized records that you can pick through. I assume they’re mostly from dead people, dropped off by their children or spouses, who have enough shit to deal with, and don’t really feel like picking through boxes and boxes of Pat Boone, hoping to find just one copy of Kind of Blue. They’re nowhere near mint condition, the artwork in the jackets is damaged or in some cases, missing, but most of them play, and really that’s all I want them for—playing. After spending Saturday night at a friend’s house listening to jazz records, I decided, “Hey, that was fun! I’d like some jazz,” so after setting up the record player we decided to hit up this place because we knew their stuff was cheap.
They didn’t have much Jazz, at least nothing I recognized. They had a lot of show tunes, a lot of country, and some classic rock and singer songwriter stuff from the 70s and 80s. I think we had a pretty good haul, some notable finds, including Eddie Rabbit’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2, Warren Zevon’s Stand In The Fire, Super Tramp’s Breakfast in America, and the closest thing I could find to a good Jazz record, Donald Fagan’s The Nightfly.
I was most excited to listen to the Fagan record, because I really like Steely Dan, but I felt like an idiot this morning when I read the Wikipedia page for The Nightfly, which said, ” It was one of the first fully digital recordings of popular music,” meaning I had just paid three dollars for an analog copy of a digital recording, which seemed kind of silly. To Me.
Not enough to just “heart” this and walk away. I’m so happy for Chris & Tracie. If I ever came into lots of money, I’d buy record players for all of my friends, along with a dozen albums I think everyone should own on vinyl:
Badfinger - Straight Up
Big Star - Radio City
Buckingham Nicks - s/t
Elvis Costello - This Year’s Model
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
Ella Fitzgerald - Best of Ella
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I
Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
The Move - Shazam
Todd Rundgren - Todd
Leon Russell - Best of Leon
XTC - Skylarking
