Digging Through the Record Bin

When I was a kid, there was something exhilarating about flipping through the albums in the record store until you found the one you wanted. The pictures were nice and big, and when you paid for it you really felt like you bought something. At home you’d rip open the plastic and put it on the turntable.

You’d take off your shoes and lie on the floor or on the bed in your big brother’s room, which had the only stereo in the house, and turn up the sound while you looked at all of the pictures. Sometimes there was an extra treat inside, like a poster.

Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, The Clash, Blondie and David Bowie all came to life through the small, tinny speakers that came attached to your all-in-one record player (unless you had those giant speakers, or else the big bulky headphones you wore late at night because you were supposed to be sleeping).

There were lyrics, usually, and pictures of the band on the road, the band in the studio, the band on stage, the band on drugs.

As the music played you’d sing along with the lyrics and be in absolute heaven. Until, of course, Side A ended and you had to get up to flip the record. CDs are just not quite the same experience. Sure, you can unfold the liner notes, but often the writing’s too small to actually read. It’s just not the same squinting over a tiny picture of David Bowie and using a magnifying glass to read the lyrics, while holding the whole thing in one hand. There’s no scratchy warmth. You can’t watch it go around; you don’t even really know how it’s all happening.

I have a reverence for records, if you haven’t caught on to that yet. It was with this sense of reverence that I recently brought out the album “Gord’s Gold” by Gordon Lightfoot that I bought a few years ago at a used record store for $6.95. Not a bad deal for a really good sound. “Gord’s Gold” is a double album and features a larger-than-life close up of Gord’s head in the 1970s on the cover. Try that on the front of a CD.

There’s nothing like listening to “Sundown” on a record. Every acoustic instrument is crystal clear, and the overall sound is deep and warm. To me, the sound of a CD or digital recording is more compressed; the highs aren’t as high and the lows not as low.

I like to think of records as more organic. Kind of like Gord himself. Although I have started collecting CDs as well, I’d never trade my records for CDs. You can’t listen to records in the car, or while jogging, or surreptitiously during class. You have to listen to them like someone who actually has time to listen to records. But if we didn’t have all of these on-the-go ways to listen to music, maybe we’d actually take the time out to lie on the floor for 45 minutes every now and then.

That might not be a bad thing at all.

Kristin Kirby

(photo credit: fensterbme)

April 14th, 2009 by admin | Posted in Collecting Records | (0)