Vinyl Fetish

"Keep Vinyl Alive." I saw the sign in an HMV ‘record' store a while ago, above a rack of two dozen records, most of them Beastie Boys or Pearl Jam albums released in the past five years. A plea to "keep vinyl alive" seems almost comical in an HMV store of all places - HMV being one of the major music retailers that promoted the compact disc as the standard medium for recorded music, and in doing so pushed records to the brink of extinction. Or so it would seem.

As anyone who is serious about music will tell you, vinyl hasn't been dying the long and wasting death that exile from HMV and its kin would seem to spell. It is surviving, flourishing in fact, although not in the same way that it used to. Vinyl has become the property of a myriad of musical sub-cultures and sub-genres; abandoned by most major record labels and record stores, it has been picked up by disciples of punk, indie, hip hop and techno and used to fit their aesthetics, technologies and philosophies. In addition, somewhere between Little Richard and Lil' Kim, records became collectibles.

High Fidelity, the recent John Cusack comedy, showed the general public a slice of life from a clandestine world often shrouded in solitude and flea markets: the world of the record collector.

If you look closely, you can see them scouring second-hand stores, looking for buried treasure, scurrying from one specialty store to another, or muttering amongst themselves about imports and white labels. For these people, there's something about listening to vinyl that borders on the ceremonial, the mystic. All one has to do is note the extreme, almost reverent care with which the black disc is drawn from its sleeve, lowered onto the turntable - cleaned perhaps - before the needle is dropped. A blip of noise signals contact, then a low, droning hiss fills the speakers before the music begins. It's almost religious.

Alan Charman owns and operates Crosstown Music, a downtown Vancouver music store which deals almost exclusively in vinyl records. Contrary to recent hype, Charman doesn't believe that vinyl is experiencing a resurgence of popularity. "It never really went away," he contends." We sold records all the way along. There are still people without CD players out there." That being said, Charman admits that the record market has experienced bizarre booms and crashes, thanks in part to the sale and trade of records through Internet services such as eBay. "Who'd have thought you could sell your punk rock collection and put a down payment on a condo?" Summarising why people still buy records, Charman cites availability, price, novelty, nostalgia, and sound quality as primary reasons.

Charman also points to early or obscure releases by artists available only on vinyl as a reason for the medium's continued popularity with collectors. "There's a lot of stuff which never made it to CD, so if you want it, you've got to seek it out."

Another shortcoming of CDs is their inability to recapture the original sound quality of music which people remember from their youth. On the subject of classic rock albums which are digitally remastered and released on CD, Charman says such albums alienate fans by changing the way the record sounds: "If you want what you were listening to back in the 70s, you've got to buy the vinyl."

While he does point out that the ways in which people enjoy listening to music are completely subject to personal taste, Charman opts for records over CDs when it comes to the timeless "which sounds better" question. He says CDs are "not as warm and not as musical" as records. Jay Millette, guitarist for Vancouver's rising punk success story, The Black Halos, agrees with Charman on the superiority of the vinyl sound.

"It just sounds better. I know everyone says that," Millette laughs, "but something about [vinyl] just sounds... punchier and boomier." Having grown up listening to vinyl punk releases, Millette feels that any scratches or pops that a record might have only add to the authenticity of listening to it.

While it's relatively easy to keep CDs in print, vinyl records usually enjoy a far shorter printing run. "When you see old records it's like looking at a piece of gold, it's an artifact. This was made then, it hasn't been redone."

For Millette, records provide a real, physical connection to the time and place in which a recording was made. One of The Black Halos' songs, "Stuck In The '90s" makes explicit mention of the halcyon days when records still reigned: "In the back of a record store / Piled up on the killing floor / Vinyl veterans who went to war."

As a musician as well as a record collector, Millette says there is a satisfaction that comes with hearing your own music on vinyl.

"When you get vinyl, it's a legitimate release. Now that you can just burn anything you want [onto a CD]... there's something legitimate about having your record come back from the factory. It's a tangible piece of finished work."

Millette says that nostalgia also plays a role in The Black Halos' decision to continue to release their music on vinyl, despite the fact that CDs are now substantially cheaper to produce.

Millette fondly remembers the detailed covers and inserts which were included with records when they were the dominant medium of music, and he says the sense of getting your money's worth when you buy a piece of vinyl is a tradition The Black Halos have tried to follow. Their new LP, The Violent Years, features an extra track not found on the CD version. The B-sides of their 7" singles are also unavailable elsewhere. The philosophy behind this is simple for Millette: " We want people to buy the vinyl."

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Vinyl hasn't simply become a symbol of cultural preservation or nostalgia, however. The actual physical properties of records have made them ideal tools for relatively new forms of music such as techno and hip-hop.

Postmodern theorists who hail the incorporation of materials from ages past into contemporary art forms as examples of cultural pastiche are no doubt delighted by DJs who turn fifty year-old rhythm n' blues classics into entirely new compositions. The decision to use vinyl to create new types of sound, however, is practical as well as ideological.

DJ Chia (AKA Lucia Tomek) is a young Seattle breakbeats DJ who uses a staggering variety of records in synthesis with each other: drum loops, children's Sesame Street records and Japanese electronic-music pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto are all combined on her turntables.

Unlike Charman and Millette, DJ Chia chooses CDs over vinyl in terms of sound quality. However, she is vocal about the advantages vinyl provides in terms of making music. "Being a DJ, [vinyl] means a hands on approach to music and sound. I can actually touch the object that the music is printed on, and that means a lot of freedom as far as sound manipulation and creativity is concerned."

As for the integration of an 'obsolete' medium into new forms of music, DJ Chia doesn't see a conflict between records and rave culture. " People still associate records with music...records are still used as a symbol for music even though they are outdated." She says there's no reason why records shouldn't still be a vital part of music, no matter what type: "Rave culture was based and built around music."

Cultural theorist Charles Mudede has written extensively on pop music, specifically hiphop. In his article, " Hiphop Rupture," Mudede describes hiphop as " the true imperfect art." Vinyl, as a flawed and discarded relic, is an ideal tool for music " formed from the waste that falls from the abundant tables of the prosperous post-modern city."

Mudede connects the terminology of hiphop ("wrecking," "rupture," "ill," "beats and pieces") to this philosophy of adaptation and misuse.

The art of scratching a record back and forth to create new rhythmic sound, for example, "is a mistake in itself: you are not supposed to stop a record, nor are you supposed to move it back and forth. You are supposed to let a record continue, to complete its cycle. The wreck is then a small symphony of mistakes, mistakes heaped on mistakes, an orgy of mistakes."

By extracting beats, loops and samples from records, hiphop DJs are doing more than just experimenting with rhythmic structures, Mudede claims - they are reflecting the poverty-stricken social climate from which hiphop originated. Taking rap legends Public Enemy as an example, DJ Terminator X is creating the musical equivalent of MC Chuck D's lyrics of black disenfranchisement by mixing and scratching records. To quote Public Enemy themselves, the DJ is literally " speaking with his hands."

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I'll be honest. I'm too young to " remember" vinyl the way most Boomers do. The first albums I ever bought for myself were on tape. That being said, I do remember vinyl, if not in the same way my parents do. I remember the dozens of children's records with which I amused myself as a kid: Sesame Street, Raffi, Fred Penner, The Muppets.

I remember the Bruce Springsteen "Born In The USA" record I nagged my parents into buying for me when I was six; I wanted to vicariously live the life of a rock star through The Boss because of our shared name.

These days, vinyl's become something of a habit for me. Although my CDs still outnumber my records by five to one, I'm slowly but surely becoming a vinyl fetishist. I love the big and glorious sleeve art that CD covers will never be able to replicate. I love the satisfaction that comes with carrying a heavy stack of records home after scouring the shops. I love the jolt that runs down the spine when a rare import single in pristine condition is found amidst dozens of copies of " Frampton Comes Alive" and Barbara Streisand records at the Salvation Army. Scratched, cumbersome and ancient: I love vinyl.

In a day and age where mp3's are calling into question the very idea of pop music being a commodity that is produced, distributed, sold and consumed in accordance with decades-old tradition, the issue of vinyl perhaps seems a bit redundant, if not completely esoteric. So be it. The world of pop music could do with a bit of navel-gazing to ward off the crass materialism of boy/girl-band sensations and Neanderthal bullying masquerading as teen angst. Buy a record. Make a record. Scratch a record. Keep vinyl alive.

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