the village buzz

grado phono cartridge on vinyl

this one goes out to “RRRrrr”:http://xterminal.livejournal.com/ .

he requested a photo of something like “massive stupid retarded quantities of vinyl.” although my collection is nowhere near the status of some of r’s friends’, i would imagine mine kicks some pretty good ass in the land of mere mortals.

i still listen to alot of vinyl. hell, there’s a record spinning on the turntable right now (it’s the soundtrack from “the graduate”).

although i have converted most of my cd collection to mp3, and i have hundreds of megs of them at my fingertips from any room in the house, there is just something about vinyl that is missing from my connected digital life.

i tried to figure out what that might be, but it eluded me for awhile. then, one night, i was laying on the floor, watching the candle bounce shadows off the ceiling and listening to a record, and i realized what it was. vinyl offers something to us that we really have no regard for anymore. commitment.

it is now SO easy to start a playlist, and after the second or third song, throw another one on. it’s really easy to do this for hours on end. you have no commitment to the album that is playing. i think humans like that kind of commitment.

we look over all the vinyl choices. grab one. remove it from its sleeve. clean it. put it on the turntable and drop the needle. all of a sudden, you are committed for 20 minutes of your life. you are going to listen to that record.

in those 20 minutes of committment, you and the artist can sort of get to know each other.

this photograph was taken by candlelight, just for the hell of it. the album on the turntable is “john and yoko’s double fantasy”:http://www.amazon.com/Double-Fantasy-John-Lennon/dp/B000002UUC/sr=8-1/qid=1169002742/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7043418-0245454?ie=UTF8&s=music

it happened to be playing, and i happened to have a camera handy.

i bought that record when it came out. i was in the 5th grade. that afternoon, this girl named kyra (one of my sister’s friends) came over, and we ended up listening to the album together.

i think we were sitting indian style, or something, on the floor i so distinctly remember that when the yoko songs came on, we kinda looked at each other like.. “wtf?”..

now, listening to that album, those yoko songs really are cool songs. good songs punctuated by moments of “wtf?”.. but still a really listenable ablum.. even after 27 years..