Im a new convert to the revival of vinyl record collecting.

I just purchased a record player.

What to play first? After thinking about it all morning, I take Earth Wind and Fire for its first spin in over 30 years.

A single disc of vinyl with a single shallow groove cut into each side.

I slide the black record out of its plastic sleeve. The muscle memory is still there and my 3 middle fingers instinctively balance the centre label while my thumb lightly touches the edge. 

After 30 years in darkness, there is surprisingly little dust on the surface. I tilt it into the light and a rainbow runs across it. I can see a tiny string of something, perhaps it’s a hair, and without thinking I blow on it sending a fine spray of spittle dots across tracks 3 to 5.

How can it be that the utter simplicity of this wriggly little line has held the power of EW&F’s brass section… frozen in silent symbol for all this time. Thirty years! Yet the moment the needle touches its surface the band explodes forth with power and memory. 

The trumpets wail. The speakers crackle and pop and…POW, it’s 1979, and its disco, and I have flares in my trousers and a tie as wide as a banana is long.

I sit between the speakers and listen to the entirety of side 1. And I hold the album cover and I examine the art and I read all the print. And, don’t judge me here, I smell the cardboard. Above all I marvel at the depth and clarity and vibrance of the sound. It makes Apple Music on shuffle over WiFi sound like cotton wool soaked in Vegemite.

Next its Miles Davis ‘Directions’. Released in 1981, a double album of recordings made in the 1960’s and 70’s with Ron Carter, Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, Gil Evans, Herbie Hancock et al. Opening the album I soak in the extensive liner notes breaking down a track by track history of the album.

The acoustics are all velvet and black coffee as Miles riffs with the band. There are occasional pops and crackles but the music is crisp and sharp and the room fills thick with cigarette smoke and cheap scotch.

Seriously. This is how music should be listened to.
First up live, and then if that is not possible, dipped in plastic and spun with chilled intention.
A physical thing, that you actually own.
A thing you can pass down or put away.
A thing that sits patiently waiting for you for 30 years.

Thanks to being a boomer and having a dad that listened to the sort of music I would eventually grow into, there is already quite an extensive discography for me to work through.

Once that is exhausted, and probably before, there is that whole search for new old records thing to explore. 

I feel (another) obsession coming on.
Analogue music, analogue photography….what could possibly be next?