Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Could We Have Kippers For Breakfast?

You may have to forgive me. I'm in auditory rapture right now; I found Supertramp's "Breakfast In America" album on vinyl today (for freakin' $1.98!), and it's spinning nearby, and...wow. Yeah, just, wow.

My parents are really tickled by my newfound love of vinyl, and I really can't explain the appeal to anyone else. Is it the crackly undertone to all the songs? Nah, it has to be more than that.

Maybe it's the interactivity of moving the needle onto the record surface? The feel of pulling it carefully out of the cardboard cover, then the paper sleeve, and easing it onto the phonograph? The feeling that the band JUST recorded this straight onto vinyl and handed it to me, and only to me? The click of the spindle when it reaches the end of the grooves and slides back across to rest until I turn the record over? The second-hand nature of the albums, that they've traveled through time and space and many other living rooms to reach my hands, my room, and my phonograph? Or maybe it's just the faces staring back from album covers, famous (but not always glamorous) faces that form a sort of history, a musical foundation, a way to be recognized?

Yeah, maybe it's all of that.

But really...it's probably just the crackly-ness. I can't handle how COOL it sounds...

-The GLS

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