Why you should buy vinyl (yes it really does sound better)

So, I finally bought a turntable.  I have been wanting one for a long time but for some reason I thought it was way too late to start collecting vinyl.  I have so much music, and would want to get ALL of my favorites (probably hundreds of albums), and I have been to so many shows where I could have gotten the record and…I don’t know, these are pretty stupid reasons but whatever, those were my thoughts.  I kept hearing that small nagging voice randomly telling me that I need a record player in my life, possibly fueled by my nostalgia of listening to records as a kid and flipping through my parent’s record collection.  I remember listening to The Police’s Synchronicity and Michael Jackson’s Bad on vinyl, and I have missed the feeling of having a great album in my hands, tearing off the plastic, pulling it out of that paper sleeve with as much care as my trembling hands could give, putting in on and dropping that needle down, hearing the slight fuzz as the needle settles into the grooves and then a sweet sweet feeling sets in when that clear beautiful sound comes blasting out of the speakers….ahhh, bliss.  I would always reverently soak in the album art, the liner notes, lyrics and pictures, anything that was on the album sleeve, as I went through my first few listens of an album, trying to get a feel for it all, reading every word as if they were the most poignant and meaningful words ever spoken (written, whatever).

My first record?  Radiohead, The King of Limbs, one of my favs from last year.  As I listened to that record I was BLOWN AWAY and have vowed to get every one of their albums on vinyl so I can hear it all like that.  The clarity of it all, the subtle nuances and complex layers of sound, the Thom Yorke mumbling that suddenly sounds like words or lyrics or something, it is truly an experience to listen to it in that format.

Don’t y’all miss that?  Wasn’t it a great time, when you so looked forward to something new to be released by your favorite band and the happiest moments were when you brought that sucker home and popped it on and cracked out on it for days and weeks?  There was no internet to leak the album onto or download or stream before you decide to buy it.  These days there is so much great accessible music out there and all you have to do is spend some time online to find it.  I can get lost online searching and streaming and listening and buying and downloading.  I can get 3 or 4 albums at once, throw them on a playlist and listen to it over and over for a while.  And I love doing all that, I really do.  But, but…..something is different, there’s that old feeling that seems lost now, the ritual of buying some coveted album and hearing it for the first time and just getting lost in it forever.

That feeling doesn’t have to be lost.  We can still buy and listen to vinyl.  We SHOULD still buy and listen to vinyl.  I found a really rad turntable that also plays CDs, tapes, iPods, and radio.  I now have a way to play every single method of music I could want, all in one appliance.  And I have some old tapes I wanna play,  I still have CDs I wanna listen to.  And of course I have everything on my iPod as well.  One thing I did not realize as I bought my first few records was that they all came with a CD or access to a digital copy so you can enjoy it on the turntable at home and on the iPod on the go.  That is a pretty great deal, I think.  I recently purchased a record from a small label in Boston and although it took a week to get the album I was able to download it immediately.  So, overall I am so pleased with the quality of sound from of the records and the availability of the music in different formats.  I don’t know why it took me so long to come around to this, but I’m arguing for buying vinyl whenever available for the ultimate listening experience.

And yeah, I know that a lot of people aren’t willing to buy music at all these days, and I understand that.  Vinyl is for the serious fan or collector, I agree.  I just think that if I want to actually buy something, vinyl is now my preferred format.  I feel like I’m getting the most bang for my buck now.

And yeah, I know that there’s a lot of pretentious fucks out there who act all self-righteous about only listening to vinyl and all that, but it doesn’t have to be like that.  I promise you can listen to vinyl for all the reasons I talked about without becoming a jerk.  I mean, look at me.  I write for The Least Pretentious Music Blog Ever so I’m proof that you can do some things that may be seen as pretentious without becoming that way.

~Leah