VINYL!

In my garage I have many gorgeous black disks of joy. Vinyl. Records. LP's...the real deal. Lot's of reggae, lot's of punk, jazz and ska. Much of it out of print, and everyone valuable to me. Every record has a story, a meaning, a purpose. The music of my youth, the music of my years of definition. Most of what I am today is a result of what I lived with then. Music, culture and college shaped me. Music on MP3 is glorious (you can fit your entire library in less space than a cassette!) but an album is so wonderfully tactile. The art makes you feel what you hear. Just look at this Cheech and Chong cover...how could you not laugh?

The Sons of the Pioneers? That's what my Mom put on when I went to sleep as a toddler. LA's Wasted Youth? That's what drove me to college during the Reagan years. Glenn Miller was a gift from Mom. The Wall by Pink Floyd I won in a radio station call-in. I picked it up on my bike...riding from Orange, California to Anaheim. I got it home, slapped it on the turntable, and immediately thought "what the hell is this?"

Disraeli Gears by Cream? My Uncle Richard's wife Laurie gave it to me one Christmas. I disregarded it because punks in SoCal tried so hard to break away from anything with long hair. But God...years later is is so powerful. I bought an ION USB turntable so I could start to RIP some of these albums. Bradley had already browsed my collection and brought me his choices. Some Jacob Miller (RIP, Jacob), some DanceHall style (Yellowman!), Peter Tosh, Lone Justice, Angry Samoans and some classic Cheech and Chong. Brilliant.

Our whole family has purchased music as MP3's for years now. I used to take our older kids to CD Warehouse in Orange and let them buy CD's; they would end up gravitating to the LP's because of the art. The lack of art, is what is the worst part of the modern age of music. It is sad to think there are thousands of people that listen to stolen P2P downloaded songs they have never seen the covers for. Don't steal, you bastards!

Boston had beautiful covers. Foghat Live. Pushead Lamort's cover for LA's Wasted Youth "Reagan's In" LP is burned in my head. The Cheech and Chong LP pictured at left, Los Cochinos, is beautifully printed. The sleeve pulls out to reveal, well, see for yourself.

The insides of the door filled with pot. Yerba. Mary Jane. Weed. Mota. And no...I never smoked it. You can't do this with an MP3. Some studios send out PDF files with the music, but it is just not the same. You have to FEEL it...not just SEE it. I noticed how many of my album covers are so worn from being pulled out of the rack and played. We'd pull my huge-ass speakers through my windows into the side yard, cue up some music and hang out for hours. Whoever made it to the record rack first played the next album.

Working in a record store during college had it benefits; I probably spent half my check on records. If I couldn't find it at our store I'd head to the Sound Spectrum in Laguna Beach. Every time we'd go up to Northern California I would take $200 dollars to spend at Amoeba records; 100 for San Francisco and 100 for the Berkeley store. It's amazing how well the USB turntable works; only my most used records need more than just a one-click cleaning. It's also sad how I forgot how to balance a tonearm! I'll post pics of my favorite album covers to my Flickr stream during the next year. This project is going to be fun.