OMG, People Buy Records? Vinyl In The News Thread

listening to a blue note lonnie smith record last night - late 60's deep groove heavy vinyl not a liberty pressing - it had NO surface noise whatsoever. it had never been played. it has the deepest fattest sound you can imagine. you could test a fancy stereo with it. the difference between that copy and a vg or even a decent vg+ copy? WORLDS! i could weep hearing a record like that. i bought something like 3500 records from a guy and 85% had never been played. so my jaw has been dropping on a daily basis for almost 2 weeks. seriously clean vinyl that has resisted the elements over many years that can still sound that amazing? over 40 years in a box in sheds and basements...i respect these things. they've got super powers. to mythologize a poorly kept/maintained/handled record is a slur to the technology. these things were built to last with even a minimum amount of care.

crackle just comes from somewhere else. unless it's like serious noise, it is in a different part of the room or a different part of your ears, sonically, than the music is, ordinarily. it isn't on top of it obscuring things.

I had a good friend for whom I taped a copy of my dad's American Beauty. When she upgraded it to CD, she was disappointed by the listening experience b/c she was used to crackling on certain places (I had also put the wrong side first, fucking up the track order). I can see how this might not translate for all albums though.

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.

love this guy

I just forked over a lot of money for a turntable and am not sorry. When the sun goes down, I really enjoy putting a record on while I sit in another room and read. It's nice to have a break from digital music. Not for everyone, I know.

We gave my 90-something grandmother one of those "retro" stereos with turntable and cassette deck. She said she wished she still had her old records and my mom suggested I bring some of my easy listening LPs over some day so we could listen to them. She listens to cassettes mostly.

Actually quite interesting piece on the BBC site about the guy who ran Beanos in Croydon :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8507703.stm

NPR's All Things Considered, today:

"Vinyl is the real deal," White says. "I've always felt like, until you buy the vinyl record, you don't really own the album. And it's not just me or a little pet thing or some kind of retro romantic thing from the past. It is still alive. United Pressing Plant is two or three blocks away from here, and they're pressing up millions of copies of vinyl every year. And people are still buying them in droves."

United has manufactured records for Motown and Music Row since it opened in 1962. These days, the old pressing machines are going full tilt. Third Man's director of production, Ben Blackwell, says he's back and forth to United on a daily basis as they collaborate on new color schemes for their limited-edition releases. United workers slice hockey-puck-shaped ingots of colored vinyl in two or three pieces and then reassemble them by hand.

"And then that puck with the labels attached is fed into the actual record press, and approximately 20,000 pounds of steam pressure compresses that puck between two metal plates, which are the negative images of your actual record grooves, so when you have a record that has grooves, these pressing plates have ridges," Blackwell says. "It really is mystifying and captivating, too. It's almost like you feel something in the room while it's happening."

would he say the same thing about a plant that manufactured coasters? because it's the same fucking thing.

god i'm tired of romance-of-vinyl crap. just get over yourselves.

There'll be new Fred Dibnah's soon!

All marving about steam driven record pressing plants...

So, how are CD's selling now compared to vinyl? On the website of a major record store here they list they're top 10 sellers of the month with a note that all things listed are vinyl unless otherwise noted (and there are no notes otherwise). When exactly did vinyl start overtaking CD's?

still can't play vinyl in cars iirc

old_timey_car_with_turntable.jpg

they should just start making cds the size of laserdiscs. that would be awesome.

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

And today's last word in business marks the birthday of a music technology that was supposed to die. Cassettes, compact discs and MP3 players were all supposed to kill it off.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

But the LP, the long-playing vinyl record, is still around - making something of a comeback, in fact. Artists are releasing new songs on a format that first debuted 62 years ago today.

INSKEEP: It took years of effort to overcome technical difficulties like grooves that were too wide and poor audio fidelity. But in 1948, Columbia Records finally introduced the microgroove long-play vinyl record, which could play an incredible 22 minutes of music on each side.

MONTAGNE: And according to Wired magazine, the first released was a Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor with Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York.

And that's the business news on MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I hear some music coming up there, Steve. I'm Renee Montagne.

INSKEEP: And I'm Steve Inskeep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUG1hXq7GHU

I NEED THAT RECORD! THE DEATH (OR POSSIBLE SURVIVAL) OF THE INDEPENDENT RECORD STORE

OK

http://www.cnn.com/2010/IREPORT/08/11/vinyl.irpt/?hpt=C2

"Alice says that vinyl has soul and that its imperfect sound is like 'a performance every time it's played. It's never quite the same twice.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/fashion/23Gimlet.html

ha. i met the guy on the left of that photo last time i was in ny

haha! yeah I know him too.

a Dazzle Ships regular

guy in center with the glasses and beard is my default mental image of the every-ilxor

We should also start a thread that we bump every time a new york writer hedges his/her reporting on a trend with some variation on "By now it's obvious that x is making a comeback/is popular"

see also "It's almost a cliche to point out that..."

I don't see that as hedging so much as apologizing for being late on something that's been done to death

or a politer way of saying "hey don't look at me, someone assigned me this dumb topic"

Or alternatively "Yeah, I know this is lame. I write for the New York Times. They pay my bills. It's not me."

a Dazzle Ships regular
― dmr, Thursday, September 23, 2010 3:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya, met him w/jeremy. have you been to the last few? my bff from hs/college is now the third member

guy in center with the glasses and beard is my default mental image of the every-ilxor

ilxor-looking dudes

have you been to the last few?

nah I haven't made it over there yet since they started back up, baby at home and all

that's what i figured

The novel spin that this story seems to be offering is that record buyers are locavores? I mean, I don't expect much more from the NYT styles section... and at least the writer knew that there was ALSO a Long Island record fair happening at the same time, which, if it was anything like the one I went into Chicago last weekend (and most record fairs I've been too) was probably NOT the set of assorted weirdos that the styles section would ever want to touch. Not much of point here except that this article seems, a la Kids Are Alright, more about strategically expanding what "locavore" means as consumer/style category.

... and that record buying/selling as "style" is just so irritating. Whatever, impotent rage, I know.

ok, so wtf does 'locavore' (which I thought meant you eat local produce) have to do w/ records? or does it now mean shopping locally, so anyone who doesn't go to a chain store a locavore now? are locavores retrosexual? i is confused

i was at the l.i. one, fwiw. picked out six $1 country records. guy said they're seven-for-five, so if i pick out another one it'd only be $5. i was, like, can we make believe I picked out another one? he was, like, ok.

it was pretty same-old, though. shoulda gone to the brooklyn one. my luck i would have wound up in the nytimes though, so just as well.

The guys in the NYT couldn't stay long, they had to get back to their home charcuteries and pick up cupcake making supplies for their gf's microfinanced online bakery.

A minor twist on a theme

disappointed that it wasn't j4mes plumm3r they busted

investors view rarities by The Beatles and Queen as more stable assets than risky market ventures.

lede to new yorker blurb on wfmu record fair:

Justin Timberlake recently told a German newspaper that he prefers vinyl
to digital music, and he is not the only one.

awesome

lol

justin timberlake, you are a bro.

justin timbrolake

While catching up on my European Timberlake news digest, I came across something that would fundamentally change teh way i consumed music

keep an eye on this space in january for an interview/photo-shoot that SF's 7x7 magazine did with ILX regular "69" about his switch from downloading/digital music to records, and about the general merits of the medium...

"well, they're big."

"having a bunch of records at your apartment is sure to get girls."