My evolved relationship with vinyl

Preface

When I spend time with DJ industry contacts, the conversation usually comes round to (or mostly starts with) how my writing is missed. So today I want to revisit a story I wrote on DJWORX (please click — it's a great read that many will relate to) about my relationship with vinyl.?

Some four years later, it’s time for an update.?

It’s complicated?

I wanted to use that trope as some sort of oh-so-humorous social media joke. But it’s not complicated at all.?

Me and vinyl? We’re done. It’s over. But it’s not an acrimonious breakup though.?

I’ve just had enough of walking past my shelves of music that never gets played. It exists like a mausoleum to my old career, and has only lasted this long because of the sheer hassle of making is Discogs ready or reacting to insulting lowball offers from dealers.

This feeling has prevailed for years, hence why I wrote the original piece. And in recent times, I’ve come to examine my music buying habits as in “why do I keep adding to this problem?”.

?The usual cycle:

• See a new release and crave it.
• Throw plastic at the screen and wait patiently for the postie to knock.
• With a scalpel blade, surgically open the seal.
• Play the vinyl one, maybe twice.
• Put it on the shelf and most likely never play it again.

It’s like buying a picture, hanging it, admiring it for a minute, and then hanging it the other way.?

It has to stop. Enough is enough.

Some context

The inspiration for writing this was a social media post from UK legend John 00 Fleming. On Facebook, he announced that he was considering selling his vinyl collection.?

The subsequent comments were predictable, with “regret” and “memories” being the prevalent themes.

I beg to differ.?

You see, the pedestal that vinyl is put upon doesn’t necessarily relate to the mass-produced dross that populated the DJ industry or the way some DJs received it.?

White labels in blank sleeves created from badly recorded four-track cassettes with little in the way of mastering or care and sent out to VIP DJs for free do not make for a treasured collection worth keeping.?

We’re definitely not in hot stamper territory here.?

Speaking to one UK VIP after liberating a long sought-after track from their collection via Discogs, he explained that week after week it just kept on coming and often ended up on a shelf unplayed. So after a couple of decades of digital DJing, he got rid of the lot.

So you’ll understand why for some the only memories are bad or non-existent and the only regret is not sorting it out sooner.?

Shark Jumping

At this point, my brain was spewing forth an increasingly lengthy flow of consciousness about the current state of the vinyl industry.

But it can be summed up with two simple facts:

• Billboard reports that 50% of vinyl buyers don’t own a turntable.
• The Sound of Music OST got a repress.?

The first one shows that for all the arguments from purists about audio quality, vinyl has been sufficiently fetishised that people are happy to demote them to be ornaments that are never used for their intended purpose.?

It’s one thing to play something once and put it on a shelf, but to buy it and not play it at all is something else entirely. Seems like 180g of remastered warmth and detail is going to waste and the planet’s resources suffer a little more.?

As for the latter —?I don’t know what it’s like outside of the UK, but you can pretty much guarantee that every used vinyl shop will at some point have the Sound of Music OST in their racks. I never bought one but somehow one lurks in my collection.?

So I joked with myself about how the vinyl buyers will literally buy anything if a repress of this ubiquitous vinyl became available.?

And then I looked it up, and there it was. Oh, how I laughed, and then hung my head in despair. I daren’t look up Jim Reeves, Tijuana Brass,?or James Last reissues now because I suspect my faith in humanity would take an irreparable knock.?

Back to me

So here I am with a collection of perhaps 1500 records across several decades and genres. And it’s time to thin the herd.?

I devised three piles —?keep, sell, and maybe I don’t know I like it but will I ever play it again? As you might imagine, the latter is a symptom of me being a vinyl buyer going through a fundamental change.?

Indeed, even as I started off on this quest, the used book and record shop my studio sits above had taken delivery of new stock that caught my eye. And despite going through withdrawal and breakup, I still wanted to add to the collection.?

It’s clear that vinyl buying is a compulsion and an addiction. It is a disease that I must inoculate myself against.?

And now I have several Ocado crates neatly split in a one-third keep and two-thirds sell.?

At the ends of the scales, the keep and sell piles appeared quickly. The sell pile is full of things I inherited, was given in a suitcase, found in an old mill, and bought without listening to and immediately regretted it.?

I returned to the oversized maybe pile frequently. Unable to make a decision, I brutally narrowed it down by asking myself if I would ever play it again. This after all is what vinyl is for. And unlike 50% of the record-buying public, I own several turntables and should use them. For now anyway.?

The definite keepers interested me the most. Some I suspect will be temporary, kept only to digitise as they don’t exist on streaming platforms or are ever likely to. Some will be because I will put them on Discogs because they’re worth more individually.?

Then it occurred to me that the overwhelming reason for keeping this lump of my collection wasn’t the memories.

Well, it is in part. But is it the feelings that holding that particular 12 or LP in my hands brought out. Not only could I remember where and when I bought it, but also the emotions that seeing and hearing it again evoked .?

Oh the feels

One thing I have learned in my journey through life, and now keep front and centre in what I do is how something makes people feel. And parts of my collection make me smile, laugh, and even well up.?

The irony is that despite the evoked feelings, I know that those keeper crates will most likely languish where they are now for another five years, at which point I’ll probably offload some more and write another piece about a final sendoff.?

Summing Up

I must stress that this is purely my own experience and feelings formed over 40+ years. I’ve journeyed from young music lover to DJ and arrived at a place where I have examined my reasons for clinging on to this alleged timeline of my life and found them wanting.?

I’m now at a stage where those particular parts of my life are done and I’m forging a fresh creative path. And a custom-built DJ workstation filled with vinyl I haven’t touched in years if not decades isn’t part of this new journey.?

I have the memories of putting it together. I have the emotions evoked by the ones I'm choosing to keep. But like everything I’ve done, I’ll have no regrets whatsoever moving them onto the next part of their journey.

I can only hope they’ll evoke feelings and emotions in their new home.?Assuming the new owner has a turntable of course. Flip of a coin on that one these days.

#vinyl #recordcollecting #dj