Vinyl Fetish

Twice now in the last week I've been reminded of something. Once in an email from Mike, Man of Mystery and Movies, and once from something I read just this morning. What I was reminded of is that I love vinyl. As in records.

And boy, do I. Love records, I mean. I always have. I get it honest, my dad loves them too. He's always had old traditional, bluegrass, country, and blues records. My mom's tastes got added into that, Ray Charles and Percy Sledge. So, my sister and I were incredibly lucky to have our parents indulge us in our love. Of course, Mom's nerves began to fray when my love turned into addiction. I can hear my mom like it was yesterday, anytime I had a few extra bucks and headed to the music store: "Are you gonna wear a record to school?" Occasionally, when she was a little more worked up, I'd get: "An album's not going to cover your naked hind end." Oh, how I longed to say, "Well, maybe a double album would," but seeing as how we didn't sass Mom, I never got to launch that one.

I did have this elaborate fantasy, though. Since my mom seemed to be so irked that I eschewed buying clothes for buying music (as I still do, Mom knows she lost) and always asked if I was going to wear a record to school, I had the great idea to fashion a dress out of album covers and come to the kitchen one morning. I'd silently grab a PopTart and head off with a wave, wearing my records to school and finally answering her lifelong question with a resounding "yes." However, it was not to be.

When my sister got married, it was a traumatic experience. Not only the losing of the sister, but the horrible day when we had to split the record collection. Sure, we each had our own albums, but there were some albums that were "ours." Parents or grandparents had bought them, or we'd pooled our money for them. It was like having to divide the spoils of a divorce. (In fact, Elvis Costello himself wrote about that: "There's a stack of shellac and vinyl, which is yours now and which is mine.")

I got all the early Beatle albums, which wasn't such a great bargain because they were scratched all to hell, but I wanted them for sentimental reasons (by then I was replacing them new copies anyway). I got almost all the Monkees albums and Herman's Hermits, which in 1978 weren't such a big deal, but boy, am I glad I got them now. My sister got all the Beach Boys, and the early Boz Scaggs records, since her soon-to-be husband helped us discover Boz she thought she had a legal claim to them. Fair enough.

And I must say, to her credit, she left all the 45s behind. We'd amassed zillions of 45s since the mid-sixties, all laying in boxes, not in paper covers, just laying there naked and ready to be scratched up. Probably half of them were mine anyway, since I was a 45 zealot, but the others, hers, ours, prizes in potato chip bags (I'll bet I'm the only person in the world who remembers that - Moore's Potato Chips used to include a free 45 with every double bag!), and stuff our folks had found hither and yon.

So, by the time I was out of high school and into the halcyon days of my twenties, I already had my Kingdom of Vinyl surrounding me. But then... then... (pronounced then dot-dot-dot; then! dot-dot-dot!)

The 80s struck!

The 80s, well, if you were a British invasion/punk/new wave/etc.etc.etc fan like myself, were a complete Renaissance of vinyl. Bands would release one single. Then they'd release the same single on red vinyl. Or blue vinyl. Or white. Or green. Then they'd release a 10-inch vinyl version. And I was in Heaven. I found the wonderful world of mail order, and import stores, and Goldmine (the record collectors magazine). And so I spent ten years or so trying to get my hands on everything I saw. Especially where the band Squeeze were concerned, and they put out some good stuff. The colored vinyl, the special issues, the 3-D covers, the non-album B-sides. Boy, of all the things I miss about the vinyl years, that's probably the biggest.

And so after the 12-inch singles and picture discs and fan-club only issues and everything else, the 80s were reaching their end. And with that came that little circle of hell. The CD.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not a CD-hater. They have nice sound, and they're portable. You can't take an album along in your car to listen to. But CDs are boring. They're boring-looking. And it's impossible to try and replace all your actual records with CDs. And remember in the beginning when they told us how indestructible the compact disc was? Not true. They can skip and repeat, too. And without the lovable warm "crackle crackle" that vinyl has. (And don't even get me started on CD cases.)

Not long before I moved I unearthed the huge box of those zillions of 45s mentioned above. Not my "good" ones, the special vinyls and issues. Just the ones collected over almost 40 years of living. In general, I just wanted to see what all was in there, if I could remember some of the songs I was listening to in the 70s when I was growing up. But behind that, I was looking for one particular single.

It's a record from my childhood, I have absolutely no idea how it made it into the collection. It had to have come from Mom and Dad, but how they got it would be totally beyond me. Maybe they got it from potato chip offers back in the early 60s, who knows. But it's one of the earliest records I can remember in my life, and it's a record called "Casting My Spell," by the Talismen.

Now, "Casting My Spell" is an old standard as far as rock/blues stuff goes. But I've never heard a cooler, more rockin' version of the song. I knew it when I was five, and I know it now. And I unearthed and looked through approximately a zillion singles just to get to the Talismen.

And here is the coolest thing about vinyl.

"Casting My Spell," being a record that's been in the collection longer than any other, is more than a little frazzled, as you might guess. In fact, it's broken. It's broken, in a split, from the hole out to the end. But! As happens with vinyl, you can lay the record down, flatten it, and that split goes right together to where you can play it, with only the occasional pop as it rounds the turntable! Try that with a CD! I dare you!

(However, as luck, or my luck, would have it, "Casting My Spell" was not in the Box of a Zillion Records. And it's killing me trying to figure out where it might be.)

Anyway, I haven't gotten out records and played them in earnest in a couple of years, since when my sister and I decided to make duelling 80s mix tapes, and I realized all my really really good stuff was only on vinyl. I got out stacks of stuff, and had a ball. Then I put it all up. And I've got the itch to get out another big stack and "play records" like I used to.

Oh. One last thing. The one thing records have all over CDs. You can hug records. Go ahead. Pick up an album of your favorite singer. One that you loved when you were younger. One you love now. Hold it out, kiss it, and hug it against your chest. Doesn't that feel good?!

You can't hug a CD. Nothing but heartache in that.