Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Follow the Leader: Episode 83: The Vinyl Revival!


Martinex1: Last week there was a rousing repartee around remakes, reboots, referrals, and regrets thanks to the reasoned request from our regularly recurring responders! What will we get today as we Follow the Leader?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

About a year ago my local supermarket started selling vinyl LPs, a mixture of vintage classics (Abbey Road, Rumours, Bat Out Of Hell) and new artists - there is even a UK albums chart devoted to vinyl. What are your opinions of this revival of interest in vinyl? Why is it happening? Do you approve? Have you bought a vinyl LP recently?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Technically speaking, vinyl adds a good deal of harmonic distortion to the recording that "warms" up the sound. These complementary frequencies provide a richer (though technically less fidelity) tonal quality. I do digital desktop recording, and there are so many expensive plug-ins that promise to "warm" up your recordings so they sound like the old days.

In other words, everything old is new again.

Yoyo

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Colin - great subject! My 20 year old son plays a lot of jazz in his guitar and piano. When I played some Beatles for him on vinyl ( I still have my records and stereo system from 1985 lol) he immediately noted how it sounded richer, fuller. This was 4 years ago. Since then I bought him a few albums as gifts (Beatles, Miles Davis).


As a practical matter he does not make time to listen to music; it is listened to in conjunction with working out, driving, etc. and since the record player cannot strap to your arm or sit in your car, it only has very limited use.Plus, the rest of the family prefers the silence that personal ear buds offer the sole listener..,

Charlie Horse 47 said...

I went to the used record stores by us ( there were 4 as of a year ago) and they told me for los are coming in daily to sell their collection. The only thing that moves well, and that they are all interested in buying is Beatles and Elvis. Everything else is “ second banana “ and has a very, very thin market. Elvis? I would think his fan base would be minimal by now?

Charlie Horse 47 said...

Folks not “ for los”

Mike Wilson said...

I still have some LPs left over from my younger days, but I haven't bought any recently. I figure the new ones are probably quite expensive, since they're marketed as "retro cool" or whatever. But you can find pretty much any song imaginable online now, so I don't bother as much with traditional media.

Graham said...

I grew listening to some of my uncle's old LP's and 45's, but when I started collecting my own music, I collected cassettes. I didn't have good experiences with 8 tracks because I didn't like hearing two songs at the same time. Though I had hundreds of cassettes, maybe thousands, over about twenty year period, the sound never had the warmth and intimacy that vinyl offered. I moved to CDs later on and now have thousands of those, and while the sound is crystal clear, it's still missing those two characteristics, other than a few vintage recordings mostly jazz, that were well recorded in the first place.

My oldest daughter has embraced vinyl in her college years, so I've picked up a few albums for her.....apparently I shop the same store as CH47.

Redartz said...

All my vinyl is gone; although I still have a USB turntable- I converted most of the vinyl to mp3 and loaded them on my computer, then sold the lp's. Unfortunate timing, though; my nephew decided to start collecting vinyl lp's about a month after I got rid of most of them. I did manage to pass along about a dozen classics to him, but he missed out on hundreds more. And about six months ago, my youngest son also took up vinyl. He posts weekly about his purchases and listening choices.

As for myself, I still hold onto cd's. As vinyl has come back in fashion, it seems concievable that cds may also become sought after collectibles. But even if they don't, they still offer good listening even if you lose your internet. All that said, it is pleasurable to visit my nephew and listen to a couple of his vinyl treasures. They do have an inimitable sound.

Humanbelly said...

Ohhhh my wife and I still have ALL of our lp's from our junior high/high school/college/grad-school youth(s). As well as several dozen from our respective parents' old collections. Not. . . . .that we have a turntable or system in active use. Heh.

But, much like CH47's situation, you know who DOES have a turntable and happily troddled off to college with a good supply of our cherished old records? HBGirl-- yup. Playin' the scratchy ol' vinyl in her studio apartment! She also echoes that the sound from the vinyl is warmer and richer than the digital format she and her peers have been listening to since birth. With them, I think there's also a "Good Old Days" nostalgic connection to a sound that was predates their existence on the planet. I suspect it's parallel to the warm feeling our own generation gets when hearing the thinnish, tinny sound of old time radio and 78 recordings, y'know?

I kept buying vinyl myself until well into the late 80's-- probably '88 or so? Then shifted largely to cassettes.

Ah-- an album that has never sounded better in ANY format than it did on vinyl? The American version of the Beatles' RUBBER SOUL. I prefer this (considerably shorter) version regardless-- but it also loses some indefinable depth in its sound when translated to any other format. "Digitally Remastering" didn't do a darned thing to make it any better at all, y'know?

HB

Humanbelly said...

Oh! Quick question for the group: For records that you played early, often, and to death-- without taking particular care of them-- did anyone else come to think of specific pops, cracks, and hisses as an innate part of listening to "your" copy of the record? Especially in the gaps?

HB

Charlie Horse 47 said...

HB - The only digitally remixed Beatles thing that I think is potentially better (than what, I am not sure, but it is really cool to me) is the intro to the Love Album where it starts with the Hard Day's Night opening chord, goes into opening lines of Get Back, etc. It also merges overlays drums from Tomorrow Never Knows over Within You WIthout You, which CH 47 really digs! ANyhow the album is chock full of gee-whiz cool stuff. SInce I've never heard that Love was on vinyl, I think digital wins by default, LOL.

HB - I hated cracks, pops, hisses, warpature... The slightest fault and I was returning the album. Then I discovered European Virgin Vinyl (first one I bought was HELP, lol). SO nice.

Graham - we have really parallel lives in various ways. Too funny...

Anyhow... I really do not listen to music deliberately much anymore, except the stray song that I want to hear 20 times over... like at this moment it's Uncle Albert and Ram On from RaM. i enjoy playing Ram On on my Uke and watching my wife laugh as I try to hit that high "Soooon right away" portion of the lyric.

So... My LPs and CDs sorrily sit there but for my son playing them. THe cassettes got pitched b/c they degraded (along with the VHS tapes).

The Prowler said...

The only streak longer in my life than not doing a sit up is not buying a new LP.

I have told the story before how I figured out how to remove the top of my Close and Play so I could play my records on them. My first albums were Snoopy vs The Red Baron, a Spider-Man album that dramatized the Man Wolf adventure and some others, and a Conan album that did Lurker in the Mists and three others. That one taught me how to pronounce "Crom"!!!

When my oldest sister went to college, we're ten years apart, I received her old albums as a parting gift. IIRC, they were Brownsville Station, Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream, Kinks Preservation Society, The Easybeats and Grand Funk Railroad, the one where their faces are on bodybuilders.

In Junior High, my mother got me a stereo, record player, 8 track and AM/FM radio. It was at this point in my life that I experienced an event that would transform my life in ways unimaginable!!!

For one single penny, and an agreement to purchase 6 more albums over the next couple of years, I could choose 11 albums!!! ELEVEN ALBUMS!!! FOR A PENNY!!!

Not only do I remember them, I still have them...

Kiss, Dressed To Kill, Hotter Than Hell, Alive, Destroyer, Love Gun, Rock And Roll Over, Alive II, Frampton Comes Alive and Cat Scratch Fever.

I have yet to say Goodbye to the bulk of my collection. Aside from my first eleven, I would have to say some of my highlights are Boston's debut, Bo Diddley's Bo Diddley and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Hard Promises.

Question: Who remembers putting the penny on the needle to fix skips?

(Put me on I'm your brand new record album
Side one, cut one listen to the songs
Play me loud don't you worry 'bout your nieghbors
Hope I make you feel good all day long
All day long

Put me on and play me loud
I'm the madman screaming in your living room
I'll soon be coming to your town
To sing and play a little tune

I said put me on and playme loud
Turn your stereo up all the way
ALL THE WAY
Now your body's immersed in sound
So hear the synthesizers play

And now you're in the mood
Let the melody just drift your cares away
It's got to do you good
As it mesmerizes you in its own way
So drift away...)

Comicsfan said...

Colin, I still have my old vinyls, and am I glad I kept them--as has been mentioned here, they provide a certain sound that CDs have never *ahem* mastered. Like Redartz, I converted many of them to MP3s, and they now have a more accessible home on my iPod. I'm especially glad I picked up some of the 12" singles (remember those?) that featured extended mixes of pop songs of the day--wow, did those take me back!

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