Duders, we are completely missing something here.

by Blaine Fridley, Music lover/keeper of a thick, full mustache

First off, full disclosure: I am far from a connoisseur of the vinyl recording. In fact, the last time I listened to a record before last night, I was probably 8 years old. And I greatly doubt that I cared about the warm, crackling, character-filled idiosyncrasies of the medium while I was blaring A Pink Panther Christmas at obnoxiously-high decibel levels. In July.

By the time I started to really listen to music, the industry had made the wholesale switch to CDs, and that's the format I used to gain the appreciation of music I have today. (My first CD? Living Colour's Stain. Not bad for a puss-faced 13 year-old.) Any records I did own had long since disappeared from the Goodwill shelves.

But last week in a fit of eBay-induced sentimentality, I purchased the very same record player I used to test the limits of parental sanity by spinning songs of Christmas cheer in the sweltering mid-summer heat: a late 70s/early 80s Fisher Price Portable (with era-appropriate burnt orange/chain-smoker yellow/poop brown color scheme). I also made sure to buy some albums, the first of which - Dirty Mind, Prince's 1980 masterpiece - was waiting for me in the mail last night when I returned from work. [note: I'll be addressing the completely underrated awesomeness of Dirty Mind in a later post]

After completing my usual evening routine (15 minutes of gentle sobbing followed by naked deep-knee bends in the sauna for an oddly appreciative audience at the local gym) I eagerly tore into the package, removed the thin black plate from the jacket, fired up that old familiar Fisher Price Portable and OH, THAT BEAUTIFUL SOUND!

Let me just say: friends of the DoF, throw out your iPods.

Just kidding.

It sounded like shit.

And of course, iPods are awesome.

The Internet has created a music lover's dream that can only end with messed bed sheets. You can listen to any motherlovin' piece of music you can dream of. Instantly. And for free.

Now I know Steve Albini analog-loving nerds everywhere will feverishly disagree, but if you really want to hear everything a song has to offer, to me, there's no replacement for a digital recording played on a professional-quality system (any strong rebuttals are welcome as always. Just make sure they're strong. Or else I'm swatting that weak shit outta here like Dikembe).

But with that said, I have to say I thoroughly loved the entire experience, and I can see why vinyl record retailers continue to do strong business despite the fact that they're peddling an antiquated product.

The experience proved to be almost exactly what vinyl geeks have shamelessly and somewhat obnoxiously preached to me for years.

It was more personal. Since the records themselves are susceptible to the elements, each individual copy of an album is going to sound slightly different as it gets scratched-up, the grooves start to wear and the record itself expands and contracts with the conditions. Add to that the variables of needle and stereo quality and every record is going to sound a little different. So it's kind of like getting your own personal performance with each record.

I also found myself paying more attention to the music itself, and began to see the value of appreciating a song as part of a whole, as opposed to just a 99-cent single.

With no distractions, I lost myself in the long-lost ritual of listening to records. I read the liner notes from top to bottom (and was amazed to learn that Prince wrote, produced, composed and performed everything on that album) and studied the cover art (which in this case is pretty much admitting to a quiet night at home with some tasteful softcore gay porn*).

*not that there's anything wrong with that.

It was totally engrossing. Even the tinny toy speakers - um, make that speaker - and alternating slightly-too-fast and slightly-too-slow record speed added, and even magnified, Mr. Rogers Nelson's signature wanked-out supersexxxed space alien synth-soul sound. No, it wasn't close to the truest representation of the music, but that's what made it worthwhile (getting back to that "each record is like your own personal performance" thing I was talking about).

Yup, even on that 30-year old toy store record player it was evident that records should regain a spot in my music collection along side stacks of CDs and hard drives full of MP3s.