vinyl bros

I own a few records from artists I really enjoy, but I don't think I'll ever purchase any more than I already have. It's way too high maintenance to make sure records don't get damaged/warp when owning them digitally is so much more convenient. They're also too expensive imo.

Good enough points: it's been an expensive year and a bit, and if I ever have to move house then hauling all this shit with me would be a nightmare. I disagree with the maintenance thing tho: maybe if I lived in a fucking swamp I'd be more concerned about warping, or about some vinyl eating fungus gnawing away at my fucking folly. And if you're the sort of person that leaves CDs and DVDs out of the box getting sctatched to fuck on the coffee table then you're beyond help anyway.

A while back I came to the conclusion that vinyl is the ideal format for fucking consumer-coomers who don't actually like music: having to abandon your coffee every fifteen minutes to go flip the fucking disc is a pest, so a lot of the time you don't bother. If I'm writing or painting or fucking or whatever then vinyl is not gonna happen.

But... this shit isn't just some funko-pop retardation sitting on the shelf either. When I'm in the mood for music (which is a lot these days: I junked the TV years ago) then I will stick the tunes on. And, because you can;t skip tracks and are actually having to engage with the platter (see: every fifteen minutes), you find yourself thinking in terms of "what album am I in the mood for?", rather than "what song is gonna make me happy for five minutes before I have to go back and choose another one?"

Someone ought to do a study on that. It's not just video games and social media that have this fucking and fruit-machine / perpetual endorphin-pump design ruining humanity. Convenience has become a byword for lazy habits and predatory social lobotomization. Fuck playing the hits, man, play the whole fucking album as it was meant to be heard: it encourages you to see the big picture, see the wood rather than the trees, etcetera.

It's pretty good for social gatherings as well. You get the boys round, you get the beers out, you put your shit on spin. Lets you know in about 15 minutes who you are going to get along with, and who can be safely ejected before they do too much damage to your limited lager stocks. Some guys are chill and will listen to whatever - I'm the fucking host, I play what the fuck I want - but some people... man, you can see the little dumb ADHD motherfuckers twitch.

Say, you put the Dayglo Abortions on: literally five minutes in they'll be like, "Yeah, cool, punk, it reminds me of *insert band here*". Ten minutes in they'll be surreptitiously eyeballing the unit looking for the phono jacks, "You like Billy Joel Bro?". If you don't step on those little bastards fingers tout suite they'll unhook your shit and be playing fucking Greenday on random through their phone on your speakers. "Don't have much charge on my phone, you got an iPhone charger?" Yeah, motherfucker, outside next to the fucking bins where the hobos piss and burn logs of dogshit for heat, get the fuck out.

Does this routine actually work in other people's houses? Cuz I swear, Hogmanay is coming up, and a fucker might die this year if they try that shit with me again. First order of business is burning out the bluetooth on those fucking monitors with an arc welder.

All this without even getting into Spotify being the actual fucking devil, or supporting the bands that you likewith cold, hard cash.

Anyway, tl;dr: there are definite benefits.

Absolutely love vinyl.. taking care of it is annoying at times but imo, if you have records which were recorded back during the days of vinyl, it is absolutely worth your time. There are exceptions to this rule though for my favorite bands (dream theater, rush, frank zappa, necrophagist, btbam.. lots more).

The idea of having to listen to an entire record is both a blessing and a curse. Some records have like.. one song I like while others have entire sides I enjoy. In order to avoid finding records I think are worth buying I will abuse streaming services to give a record a once through prior to purchase. However overall I still prefer relaxing and listening to entire records as a way to de-stress after work if it is crunch time. There is something about putting on a record that really puts me into a good place, especially with more complex material because it is fun listening to a single musician's work over an entire album (focusing on drums specifically, or keyboards, or guitars, etc).

I have been thinking about 86'ing my TV for a while now and just replacing it with my hifi entirely so it is interesting that other people have done the same thing. Don't use it all that often anymore because phones are a thing when I need to catch up on the news.

The cool factor during parties is next level. There is something about spinning up a record that makes everyone happy (even though some people just don't get it and criticize the expense and inconvenience until the cows come home). I hear criticism a lot from older people. They just really appreciate the convenience of streaming over everything else after dealing with records during their earlier years.

There is something to be said about the convenience factor though. With records you have to take care of them.. and make sure your equipment is set up correctly.. replace cartridges if you use them a lot.. (apparently they also time out) etc. Always have to have good sleeves available at the minimum for all record purchases so those gross paper sleeves don't scratch my vinyl. Record cleaners are another thing to have around, and there are even record flattening machines. I have always wanted to try out one of these so maybe sometime in the future I will post about it.

CDs/SACDs for everything else though. A good CD transport sounds far superior to streaming imo.

Anyways happy listening.