Listomania

A Vinyl Collection Primer

It is tough to get too invested in something you stream, especially if it is just background noise to working or something that some algorithm says you will like. Streaming music is a godsend and a curse at the same time. If everything ever recorded is available, what is worth chasing down. What is cool, what is worth listening to from 60 plus years of back catalog? What of today’s struggling musicians, fighting for mind share, fighting to get a gig? Unless they happen in a big way like Arianna Grande or one of the 14 artists who are today in the Billboard Top 20 whom I have never heard of. Other than for those global high volume songs 97% of all streaming revenues is insignificant to the artists. On top of the ridiculously low level of income for the vast majority of artists streaming devalues the actual output, makes the song at best transitory and has killed the body of work called an album.

We started with single songs on either side of 78’s and then 45’s in jukeboxes and then chart shows on the radio. But then in the 1950’s the revolution went down to 33 RPM and the album arrived, a collection of songs, 15-20 minutes a side, 2 sides, telling a coherent story about the artist. What started with Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole became in the hands of the artists of the 60’s an expansive and unlimited palate. From as perfect a linked little collection of songs as the 14 minutes and 27 seconds of the first side of Zappa’s ‘Apostrophe’ and its tale of Nanook of the North through to the sprawling double concept albums like Yes’ Tales of a Topographical Ocean’ or triple albums like Woodstock or box sets like the Concert for Bangladesh. They can be as closed to the outsider as possible with no names on a plain sleeve or the ever popular gatefold which opens up a new world of the artist to the purchaser with artwork, lyrics and players noted by tracks, snippets of the inner workings in musings and thank you’s to Gods and family members. The album is everything that music that wants to be taken seriously needed, a big enough place for personal expression, a statement.

The flip side with vinyl albums was of course that they are liable to scratching and heat and damage easily so they do not travel well. They do not take the bouncing ride of a car well so either you listened to the radio or had to do without. So increased mobility demanded solutions for car playing in the way of the 8 track tape. It never really took off in Europe as the players were large and our cars were small and the clever folks at Phillips had a much better solution in the cassette. We could record our vinyl and play it in the car, then Sony came along and took Philips idea one stage further and came up with Walkman, the portable cassette player that could be shaken and still played true, even if you were running. The record companies decided this format was easier for exploiting retail than vinyl; less care, less space and spreads the music into gas stations, convenience stores and out of the hallowed record shops with their listening booths and racks and racks of records.

The sound of prerecorded music cassettes was shit, they got stuck, jammed and tore and the case was no place for all the information that the creative minds were used to speading over a gatefold sleeve and album liner, so the folds got more intense and the print got smaller and they were still shit. They were also nearly the same price as the album so someone was getting ripped off and you knew it was not the record companies. Cassettes were great for recording a selection of songs you wanted to send to someone you really liked and the mix-tape was born. Yes the sound quality was shite but “Home Taping was Killing Music!”. There was little point printing the lyrics etc as the cassette case was tiny.

Then the music industry said “have we got a solution for you to solve the quality problem we created with Cassettes”, laser read Compact Disks! Mobility, digital quality as in crisp clean digital clean sound and only twice the price of cassettes. They were more expensive than vinyl as they were a premium product, the digital quality was so “clean”, again even though they were self evidently cheaper to produce and distribute and took up less shelf space. So the poor vinyl album disappeared….unloved and under appreciated. The new music systems stopped bothering to have phono pre-amps as no-one needed them. Within a couple of years they had a stable CD playing unit in cars as standard and the cassette was finally dead, and the mix-tape sadly with it. By this time the vinyl record had basically died except for classical music and some audiophile jazz fans. The CD brought a whole medium for re-issuing back catalogs, out takes and as much material as you want to release as the run time was up from the 45 minutes of 2 times 20 plus minutes of vinyl records or cassettes to 60 minutes a disk, 120 minutes for a double disk. Still not a lot of space for the art work and lyrics and about this time I realized I needed reading glasses as I could not for the life of me read the small print in CD cases.

Neil Young was the first to start chuntering about the digitally clean sound of CDs. When in the 2000’s the I-pod took off and music moved first to digital tracks for sale and download and then when there was enough broadband access 10 years later and music moved to everyone’s phone streaming music was here. If he was pissed off about CDs he was enraged by MP3 format. The compromise was that sure the music is a bit tinny but you play days of music stored on your phone or Ipod or today with Spotify, Amazon or Apple music you can access nearly any song anywhere, anytime, doing anything.

I had built up a collection of around 1200 albums, Eps and 12” by the time vinyl died out and the likes of Tower Records disappeared. I never really went over to cassettes other than the volume of cheap Asian copies I amassed on my travels but I finally gave in to CDs. I traded in albums to get store credit for CDs. I amassed a large collection of CDs and kept just the rump of my records, the stuff that really meant something. Then I finally realized, after yet another move that the CDs were just occupying space and as a constant ripper I had months of music in my I-Tunes library so why not give up on them so I started trading them in and using the store credit for newer stuff.

But then if you have the song in a digital track why not just share it as a digital piece of code, why have all that technology to record the track then read it again, why not just go straight from the track to an amp and some speakers. Ripping and streaming did that thanks to Apple Music and the I-Pod. Enter Spotify and the ubiquity of smart phones and why bother owning anything?

Well, that is not the end of the story! Us humans like to own things, treasure things, obsess over stuff, collect, cosset, catalog and cry over stuff. So vinyl has made a comeback for the very reasons it was so powerful a medium in the first place. 7″ singles less so as they are too much of a faff and for the youth who are more interested in tracks or singles they will still stream in the majority. Middle age folks with disposable income are back filling their collections with new versions of albums they lost their virginity to, got their University acceptance to, proposed to their wives to, had their first nervous breakdown to. The very albums they traded in for credits to buy CDs from Amoeba Records 20 years ago.

I had schlepped my singles – mainly 77-86 and the core of an album collection from house to house, across the Atlantic (now 5 times), or at least my Zappa, punk and new wave collection. So when in San Francsico and going to gigs again, post-separation in 2012 I would buy the 12″ vinyl from the merch desk and started buying again from second hand record stores which the Bay Area has lots of still – probably due to the highest concentration of hipsters, old and young, anywhere in the world.

Then Olivier, my tutor at Alliance Francaise, introduced me to Discogs and another rabbit hole appeared and I was off with Alice to a place where you can find any and every album ever made.

Here is an oblique guide to the rabbit hole wrapped up in blogs and stories: what vinyl should you absolutely own or at least some Spotify playlists to help you explore……

Pretentious moi? Prog Rock

Cultural appropriation’s poster child – Blues Rock

I‘m Frank – If Mark E.Smith met Frank Zappa

Which one is Pink? – The best of early Floyd

Days of Future Passed – What happened to the 90’s?

I am planning to write the following as well, check back every now and then……

Heads will roll – New Wave – British

This is not your house – New Wave – American

Kool FM – Electronic

She’s got a problem – Aughties Alt Rock

Meet on the edge, Folk Rock

You Can’t Play That On Stage, Frank and The Mothers