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Record Store Day
Apr. 20th, 2014 07:50 amYesterday, April 19, was Record Store Day. It started, I believe, about seven years ago, though "vinyl" has been making a comeback for some time. I'm not quite sure what to make of it all.
On the one hand, it's rather nice to see an ever-growing group of people thumbing their noses at the phenomenon of obsolescence of formats, including some that were generally considered technologically and sonically superior: think Beta videotapes and reel-to-reel audiotape. And on the other hand? Well, LP's will never be as portable as CDs, cassettes, MP3s, sound waves or brain waves and I don't think the convenient and portable formats will go away any time soon.
LPs certainly gave rise to some gorgeous and highly creative cover art. Sergeant Pepper. King Crimson. The Stones album with the real-life zipper on it. And then there were the defiantly minimalist covers like the Beatles white album. The size of the covers meant there was ample room on the back for liner notes, as well as inside for other interesting inserts. And sometimes the vinyl and the label on it were works of art in themselves!
What about sound quality? I must say that when I first heard CDs, I thought they had a certain "boxed in" sound to them. I don't know that this was in any way connected to whether they were full "DDD" as opposed to "ADD" or "AAD" or whatever. I think maybe in removing some of the scratchy and other imperfections, they removed some of the "good" sound at the same time. And many of the early CDs I got would have skips or loopabouts that I couldn't repair. The later ones have been much more reliable. Is it preferable to have the needle-noise you get with LPs, or is that just making a virtue of necessity? I will say that when the Beatles complete albums box came out some years ago, I didn't queue up to get it in the supposedly more authentic mono format rather than in stereo.
On Record Store Day, participating record stores have a few special releases just for the occasion. They seem to have all the cachet of those under-the-counter "bootleg" albums we used to get in the sixties and seventies. It's a nice idea, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to get my hands on one - when EVERYTHING's a collector's item, then nothing is!
One of my planned retirement projects is to sort through my LP collection. Some of them likely never will be available commercially as CDs. I do have a device that converts LPs to CD format, so I'll have to start using that, once I decide which ones I want to convert. And I want to start actually playing the LPs occasionally, and maybe start identifying what it is about their sound that I like or don't like. I notice that craft stores like Michaels actually sell LP-sized picture frames now for displaying that great cover art (but then what do you do with the record itself??)
So much vinyl, so little time...
On the one hand, it's rather nice to see an ever-growing group of people thumbing their noses at the phenomenon of obsolescence of formats, including some that were generally considered technologically and sonically superior: think Beta videotapes and reel-to-reel audiotape. And on the other hand? Well, LP's will never be as portable as CDs, cassettes, MP3s, sound waves or brain waves and I don't think the convenient and portable formats will go away any time soon.
LPs certainly gave rise to some gorgeous and highly creative cover art. Sergeant Pepper. King Crimson. The Stones album with the real-life zipper on it. And then there were the defiantly minimalist covers like the Beatles white album. The size of the covers meant there was ample room on the back for liner notes, as well as inside for other interesting inserts. And sometimes the vinyl and the label on it were works of art in themselves!
What about sound quality? I must say that when I first heard CDs, I thought they had a certain "boxed in" sound to them. I don't know that this was in any way connected to whether they were full "DDD" as opposed to "ADD" or "AAD" or whatever. I think maybe in removing some of the scratchy and other imperfections, they removed some of the "good" sound at the same time. And many of the early CDs I got would have skips or loopabouts that I couldn't repair. The later ones have been much more reliable. Is it preferable to have the needle-noise you get with LPs, or is that just making a virtue of necessity? I will say that when the Beatles complete albums box came out some years ago, I didn't queue up to get it in the supposedly more authentic mono format rather than in stereo.
On Record Store Day, participating record stores have a few special releases just for the occasion. They seem to have all the cachet of those under-the-counter "bootleg" albums we used to get in the sixties and seventies. It's a nice idea, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to get my hands on one - when EVERYTHING's a collector's item, then nothing is!
One of my planned retirement projects is to sort through my LP collection. Some of them likely never will be available commercially as CDs. I do have a device that converts LPs to CD format, so I'll have to start using that, once I decide which ones I want to convert. And I want to start actually playing the LPs occasionally, and maybe start identifying what it is about their sound that I like or don't like. I notice that craft stores like Michaels actually sell LP-sized picture frames now for displaying that great cover art (but then what do you do with the record itself??)
So much vinyl, so little time...
