Why Vinyl Can't Survive

tapes, on the other hand, I just chucked out a huge trash bag full of 'em

easy bro, that's some heavy jive yr layin' down.

there is no wishbone ash in the afterlife.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/RussianRainbowGathering_4Aug2005.jpg/180px-RussianRainbowGathering_4Aug2005.jpg

http://www.popsike.com/php/detaildata.php?itemnr=4795374289

i've never heard it! i still haven't. i'm gonna get him to make me a copy.

M@TT, please keep in mind that cocktails are not smoked

rough diamond - s/t

golden avatar - a change of heart

bell & james - only make believe

vance or towers - s/t (awesome rekkerd! 1975. A&M Records)

karen alexander - voyager (also awesome! elektra. 1978.)

tiger - goin' down laughing

trigger - s/t

john randolph marr - s/t (a nilsson house production. and nilsson fans would certainly dig it.)

susan barlow - s/t

romanelli - connecting flight

queen samantha - the letter

the reggie knighton band - s/t

the max demian band - take it to the max (i would definitely buy this on cd. my copy is kinda crappy.)

http://www.needledoctor.com/s.nl;jsessionid=ac112b791f43d48b52deeb8e4799a189daca6ed5666d.e3eTaxeKbh0Te38Kah8MahqSbx90n6jAmljGr5XDqQLvpAe?it=A&id=7481&sc=2&category=401

http://www.needledoctor.com/s.nl/it.A/id.680/.f?sc=2&category=791

http://www.roksan.co.uk/Radius5Photos/radius5_01_JPG.html

http://stereophile.com/turntables/258/

http://www.needledoctor.com/s.nl/it.A/id.1973/.f?sc=2&category=45

http://www.simonelvins.com/paper_record.html

http://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/663.html

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue16/lavigneroom.htm

So great...it's like when the Pope gave his blessing to The Passion of the Christ. "It is as it was," baby.

2. CDs are teh worst. As in, I have more problems with CDs and their players than I have ever had with any of my vinyl, new or used, or my record players. Obviously, I get why CDs can be truly excellent in certain situations.

3. IPods suck the joy out of music simply because of their awful interface. I can't deal with that shit-- scrolling scrolling scrolling accidentally touch something with the nub of your finger and fuck the song's changed and it's totally jarring. Unless I win one in some contest, I can't see myself ever owning one.

4. Since people relate to music and music-as-object in different ways, any sort of argument here is sort of silly. I like records and mp3s and tapes. You might not. But we might listen to the same things and feel similarly about them. So what is the debate about? Nobody's going to stop buying records, and the plants will keep making them as long as there is some demand. At least in other parts of the world.

shuffle shuffle shuffle all the great shit you put on there on shuffle

(also, playlists)

I love my iPod

but records are the best

also, god punch otm

Also, tho an orchestra conductor might have some cred in the matter, your audiophile friend likes Sting. Cred = eliminated, in my mind.

I FUCKING HATE SHUFFLE GODDAMNIT.

Sting is very popular at those shows; I was almost seduced by something off Ten Summoner's Tales on a Kuzma Stogi, it sounded so bleedin' lovely.

Vinyl is a bit of treat, a more serious purchase (though I'm not one of those audiophiles who think the sound is inherently superior); CDs I tend to think - oh, I can always dump this on eBay somewhere down the line if it's disappointing. I haven't sold a vinyl record for 13 years, whereas we've slimmed our CD collection by 10-15% in the last year. If the vinyl doesn't fit, buy more storage; if the CDs don't fit, junk some CDs.

-- scott seward

I thought you already had a copy of that (amazing) Debris rec, Scott! I remember it showed up a couple of years ago on somebody-or-other's long list. No, NOT the NWW list - more like "What's the rarest album you own?" or some such.

If not yours, maybe it was Stormy's list I'm thinking of...

iTunes pretty much reproduces the exact same thing on your computer fwiw (enqueue? no, that song is switching RIGHT NOW!) and it would drive me INSANE if I had to use it.

I do like my iPod nano though... I'd like it more if it actually had BASS (fucking Apple) but it's functional enough for the price.

I only just started buying vinyl again heh. I covet vinyl collections too, if only because I feel people with them have more foresight & wisdom than I do. I have no problems with CD's though... I'm pretty (anally) careful with them though.

-- mark grout (mark.grou...), August 17th, 2006.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

you couldn't have said it better.

I got thew Avengers record too and School's Out by Alice Cooper, those are good records too.

It would have been easy to see the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood performing that year, though I never did. Its lone record was a sunny mixture of straight-up jazz with a blues spine, a music that wants the latter-day word “fusion,” though that word does so little good. Above all, it was a reminder of the eclecticism of the time. Audiences that would soon diverge found themselves packed in a hall together all night long, like one October weekend at Fillmore West when the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood shared the bill with Van Morrison and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.

I heard “Martha’s Madman” in my head, and I did what I usually do. I went to the iTunes Music Store. Nothing. Same at Amazon. So I walked down to the barn, where all my old albums are stored, and dug out my vinyl copy of “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood,” which is now sitting on my desk. I no longer have the equipment to play it. Nearly every album in those boxes in the barn was converted to CD long ago — some of them several times over. But not “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood.”

We live, of course, in an age of accelerating digital replication. Before long, it seems, every recording of every kind in existence, along with all the outtakes, will have been turned into a CD or a DVD or a digital file for download over the Internet. But some things get left behind.

Digital conversion seems almost effortless, a virtual transcription of the world as we know it. But there is a financial friction to it nonetheless. These days it’s no longer necessary to produce an actual physical CD to sell in record stores. Downloadable files will do — no packaging required — but even making these has its costs.

What it takes to push a work from analog to digital is a marketing opportunity. The death, for instance, of Johnny Cash and a movie based on his life was a wonderful chance, as one industry spokesperson put it, to revisit his inventory, which, as it happens, is partly on Columbia, a company now owned by Sony BMG.

There will probably never be a movie based on the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, no commercial incentive to remaster and rerelease this album. The story of the band is a good one but all too familiar — the inevitable clash between the artistic and business sides of the recording industry. The band fell apart disputing the honesty of its manager.

What’s left is an orphaned vinyl LP. The inner sleeve, a space for record company promotion, says, “If It’s in Recorded Form, You Know It’ll Be Available on Records.” Well, I wish it were available on CD.

I talked to Jerry Hahn the other day. He teaches jazz guitar in Wichita, his hometown. He’ll be 66 in September, with grandkids. He sounds good. “You should have heard us,” he said. He also said that the master tapes of “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood” are stored somewhere in New York State. The man who produced the record has retired to Hawaii, where he and his wife own several restaurants. I haven’t been able to track down the manager. I’d like to hear his side of the story.

And as for hearing “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood,” one fan has posted the whole album in MP3 form — ripped from the vinyl — on the Web. I downloaded it the other day. It’s a digitally compressed version of an analog recording that was, according to Hahn, too compressed to begin with.

Even through the mist you can still hear the brightness of the music. But someone needs to find those master tapes, breathe some air into them, and do this minor masterpiece (and all the outtakes) justice at last. I’d buy a copy, especially if I thought that some of the purchase price might make its way to the artists.

Have you replaced the white earbuds with something else? Makes a GALAXY of difference.

But it's not quite as bad as the sound I get out of iTunes, which only bears some resemblance to music to my frustrated ears. I don't have any explanation why this is the case.

And as for all of those weird complaints about mp3 and sound quality, er -- FUCK A DUCK! Haven't these people ever heard of lossless compression?