Is one of you lot (not me Guv, honest) Stuart, 55, from Glasgow?
A light and amusing insight on the record buying demographic, populated mainly by the late 40 – 50 somethings. Who’d have guessed?
I particularly like one record shop employees view that they see themselves as ‘social workers’ to their clientele.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/aug/12/vinyl-destination-who-is-actually-buying-records
It wasn’t me 🙂 Not Glaswegian. Although, I am of a similar age and have around a thousand records.
However, I can endorse the art and decoration angle. I noticed a while ago, a couple of my albums were missing. I barely play my vinyl but for some reason decided to hunt down my vinyl edition of John Coltrane’s Blue Train and Billie Holiday’s Songs For Distingue Lovers. They were not there! What could have happened? Mrs Nock could shed no light.
A month or so later we were at our daughter’s flat and there on her shelving unit were the two records! When I remarked that she didn’t even own a record player, she replied “yes, but they look so cool”.
Which they do, I suppose. Kids eh? Gotta love ’em. I suppose 🙂
That happened to me. My daughter had them on her wall in those black instant frames you could buy for elpees. Elvis’s Golden Records 1-3 and Ziggy Stardust IIRC.
Gee my kids would be drawn and quartered. If they had a record player I’d be impressed by the good taste, but for show ? Capital offence.
I do play my vinyl but my, ahem, slightly younger love interest (relax – she’s 36) seems to appreciate the look of them as much as the sound. She also said my records are cool. She’s right, of course.
I have 20 odd vinyl records. Around half were bought in my youth. Surviving voyages and properties, enthusiasms and enervations, loves and separations. The rest acquired more recently.
The first lot includes Blood On The Tracks and It’s Too Late To Stop Now and Hejira. Innocence. Experience. Resilience. The latter purchases feature Bat For Lashes and an Ibiza DJ collection. Discovery. Delight. Renewal.
Mine are in the 100’s (albums, not love interest). I have been through the vinly is best, A/B comparisons, Linn Sondek and signal only pre-amp/amp combinations and I have to say what a load of aggro it all was.
The ease of CD’s (particularly with a now huge secondhand market) and downloads is def my preference.
The single redeeming feature and enduring appeal of albums will, to me, always be their medium as a physical piece of art. But at what price in this day and age?
Plus, going into a record shop now with the thought that the guy/gal behind the counter may look upon me as someone in need of a musical mentor gives me the creeps.
So much so that I have been practicing my rebuff to them should I ever be approached -‘I’ve been listening to Steely Dan, I’ll have you know young man/young lady’ accompanied by a slight backward incline in my posture, a look that barely reaches the end of my nose and total evasion of eye contact.
That’ll see them off.
I’m just over 65. I have about 250 vinlys, filed alphabetically. I also have a small collection of old 7″ singles and a decent-quality record deck, but I haven’t played anything on it in at least the last 3 years, probably more.
Oldest vinyl album is most likely “The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown”. Newest acquisition would be the recently-released “Still Happy” by Harry Beckett.
Oldest 7-incher would probably be “Keep On Running” by The Spencer Davis Group, most recent a couple of 7″ picture discs by The Great Albatross, bought at one of the Union Chapel “Daylight Music” events.
I usually have 3 vinly covers on display in my hovel. Currently they are “Funk Or Walk” by The Brides Of Funkenstein, “Showpeople” by Mari Wilson and “A Rainbow In Curved Air” by Terry Riley. I like to change my displayed covers occasionally for variety.
I like to change my displayed covers occasionally for variety.
–
T-shirt
Have about 1000 LPs and 2000 singles all filed alphabetically (re-filing is a cathartic practice), and another pile on the floor waiting to be catalogued and filed.
I fit the demographic stated, and can totally get the “headspace” and “comfort” references (not sure about the “filling the void” bit.
I too will always plump for the physical arefact over download, but most purchases are CD (as is most listening). The vinly thing for me is about ownership, admiration, collecting complete catalogues, and listening (if I remember).
I can’t get all dewy-eyed aboyut the sound quality because despite several quids spent on equipment, I’ve obviously got cloth ears and can notice no massive difference in the sound output (I feel this statement is herecy, and I’m definitely missing “something”0
It fair warms the cockles of my heart to see the term “vinly” used so readily in this thread. Hurrah for the vinlys!!
Vinly is the correct, universally accepted term.
A request will be sent to the Oxford English Dictionary for inclusion in future editions.
I agree.
But for the avoidance of any confusion, my inspection gloves will always be known as vinlys.
“Inspection” gloves, eh?
*winks knowingly*
I think you will find the correct spelling is “vynal”. On eBay it is…
Vinly: adv with obsessive dexterity. e.g. ‘The wizened creature’s extraordinary fingers riffled vinly through the secondhand jazz section’
Never mind vinly. My new favourite word is now “riffled”!
I riffled through the vinlys
Lonely as a cloud (clod?)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er car boot sales
When all at once I spied pure gold
A pristine copy of “Happy Trails”
Amongst the bric-a-brac and tat
Quoth I, “I’m ‘avin’ some of that!”
Beautiful!
*sobs*
Very good MH!
…but when I got home I felt a right Charlie
for inside the sleeve was a STF copy of No Parlez
Good work, JC. Nice references 🙂
Seriously thinking about having this printed on a t-shirt.
I remember being in a discount cd store and this woman stopped and stared at me.
You know those places mountains of the same stuff and largely crap and then every now and then something unusual appears.
So I must have been riffling thru with the pace of a machine gun , occasional jarring halt, then riffling resumes.
She on the other hand had turned over each cd looked , moved on to next etc.
” I do this a lot ” I said.
You know you’ve been at it for years when you can use both hands to flip through two rows at once, eyes on full swivel as you progress.
You know what I hate? When there’s a civilian in front of you leisurely looking through a box of records like they have all the time in the world, turning it over to read the track listing and then – they even take the record out to check the condition.
Meanwhile you’re standing behind them fuming.
Or worse – looking them all up on their bleedin’ phone. I had to update my Ten Top Tips for car booting for vinly to include this in the Etiquette section http://carbootvinyldiaries.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/10-top-tips-for-car-boot-vinyl-hunting.html
Just as bad – they sprawl forward so that they are bodily covering a goodly section of vinlys – including stretched-out elbows – that you could be checking.
The stories I could tell. I’ve seen fights break out when an interloper tries to dive into a box already occupied by a browser.
I love the idea of vinly and brought my meagre 500 odd back in from the garage last year. I bought a deck. I bought some new old records. Then nothing. I had digitised them, the old ones, a decade ago so the music is all there, accessible on my computer and i-pod, backed up to the hilt, so whenever that urge comes, I can’t be arsed. I can even lie in bed with my phone and remotely charge up the sonos downstairs to play the songs I am thinking of. The loss by compression, which my ears can’t tell anyway,is more than made up for the quality of sound produced. When the squeeze moved in, bringing another 500, I swore I would digitise those too. Have I yet? Nah.
Today a fellow car booter tweeted a photo of a typical scene: a bunch of blokes clustered around some boxes of records in a field at some ungodly hour of the morning. With one exception they were all middle aged. The exception was a slightly younger bloke – with a luxuriant beard, of course. Not a gal in sight, although if one were around she’d need to sharpen her elbows.
I will just slip this in here quietly…
Here are some recent LP and CD finds on my second offering to the world of interweb music. Fill your lugholes. I am currently digimetizing some classic rock tracks from the maestro himself, er, James Last.
Sometimes I worry about you Beany – not often but sometimes.