This last week I reached my final form, record player owner. My entire life, all twenty-nine years and seven months of it, occurred in order to prepare me for this. Nothing, except for death or nuclear war, could have prevented me from one day owning this piece of obsolete machinery. Just as Frodo was destined to carry the One Ring, or Jim and Pam were destined to get together, I was destined to own a record player. The timing of the purchase remained the only variable left unaccounted for.
At first the record player, a mint green Victrola, sat useless on a black table that sits in a corner of our living room. I purchased it before I had any records. Please, make fun of me for this. A horrible decision on my part. The record player, one of those units that includes a radio, CD player, Bluetooth connection, headphone jack and a thousand other useless doodads, loomed in the living room, a totem of my quixotic quest to develop an aesthetic based solely on “ironic” consumption. Fortunately, this state of non-use did not last. I did not turn this record player into a hollow symbol, an attempt to project status into a world where it becomes more and more meaningless every day. What I am taking a long time to say is, I came into some records.
I got the chance to dig through some of my girlfriend’s parent’s old records. Thank you, Mike and Debbie! Even though my real desire involves wearing the t-shirt of some obscure band and digging through record store crates while surreptitiously looking around to make sure everyone can see my cool and diverse taste in bands, getting a bunch of free records does rule. I also purchased one record of my own, a vinyl-only episode of a comedy podcast, perhaps the most Dylan purchase of all time.
Over the last week I’ve listened to every album that we received, except for the Bing Crosby Christmas album. Pushing aside all the audiophile claims about the difference between analog and digital recordings, listening to records does differ from listening to music on Spotify or iTunes. For one, it requires much more physical involvement. Every twenty-two minutes you have to get up and flip the record if you want to continue listening. Switching artists means putting the record back into its sleeve and then back into the physical album. The album then goes in a holding case. You have to make sure you don’t bend the records or get scratches on them. It also requires an investment. Skipping individual songs requires more patience and skill than I have. The chance that you could break the needle certainly requires a level of care non-existent to Spotify songs. Playlists do not exist in the world of records. All of this adds up to a different listening experience than throwing on the earbuds and pressing play on your “Summer Jams” playlist.
I’ve written before, on this very site!, about how I often end up making playlists with too many songs. Another side of this issue is that I often pay less attention to the music that I listen to then I’d like. I’ve found myself zoning out while listening to music, playing the same songs over and over again. I do this not because I like them that much, but because I know them well enough that I can zone them out and do something else instead of just listening to the songs. I even recently found myself doing this while checking out new albums, a disconcerting trend. I very much enjoy listening to music, discovering new stuff, in general grooving with my favorite tunes. I can’t think of many things more pleasurable than hearing a good-ass bassline for the first time, or catching a new flourish in a song you’ve listened to a hundred times. But zoning out while listening to music does not create the most conducive environment to discover these things.
Playing records has changed this for me, at least in part. The physical aspects of it, the ceremony of the thirty-three, in many ways forces the listener to pay attention. Not that zoning out while listening to Dan Fogelberg’s Nether Lands couldn’t happen, but the bar for that happening sits much higher. While I’ve only been at it for a week or so, I’ve also come much more to appreciate the artistry involved in constructing an album. The physical restrictions of records, much like the syllable restraints present in haikus or limericks, required decision making and planning.
Of course, most people do not have access to the luxury funds needed to purchase a record player. I have also devised a rather complicated solution to a problem that hardly deserves that designation. I could, you know, just pay attention to whatever I listen to. The internet however, has addled my mind beyond recognition, turning a previously healthy functioning brain into a pile or lukewarm eggs scrambled in the French-style. So, having been destroyed by one form of technology, I’ve turned to another piece of tech to fix my problem. Just as the old lady who swallowed a dog to catch the cat she swallowed to catch the bird she swallowed and so on down the line, I’ve only delayed the problem. A perpetual motion machine of putting stuff off, an ouroboros of non-solutions. But for now, I intended to enjoy the delay. I like putting on records. Listening to deep Electric Light Orchestra cuts does help shunt aside some of the excess worrying time that COVID has forced upon the world. The used nature of the records provides a connection to a living past. Physical media, unlike the solely digital stuff, provides a tangible history. Words written on the sleeve, notes for who owned it. Even the state of the records provide clues. Favorite albums can be deduced through which ones show the most wear and tear. Love notes from a forgotten wannabe beau written on the record sleeve. An archive of preference. In many ways things like records hold memories far better than an mp3 file. The bodily sensation of holding a record you haven’t seen in years can bring forth a torrent of remembrances in a way that pressing play for the fortieth time on a Spotify playlist just can’t.
This isn’t just true for songs. I have similar feelings about physical books versus digital ones on a kindle. Seeing the chili stain on my copy of Perdido Street Station brings back great memories of the time, well, the time I ate chili while reading Perdido Street Station. While I don’t want to have a twelve-foot tall DVD case tower in my room any more than the next person, the intangibility of a Netflix queue does not exactly lend itself to memory creation.
I don’t want to come off as a Luddite here. I certainly take advantage of the pleasures of digital entertainment, probably more than I should. But I do find that when I “consume media” – an awful phrase – I tend to enjoy it much more when it has a weight. When it still exists even after I stop using it. So I think I’ll keep the record player, any try to not be unsufferable about it.