So I’m playing an all vinyl set tomorrow night. Not only that, but an all 90s drum & bass vinyl set! Going through the old records brings back a lot of memories. Now, this is not going to be a post about how vinyl is better than CD/MP3/the digital age/Jesus/etc. Hell, I don’t necessarily think it is. I looove the digital age.
I will say this though: what I like about vinyl or physical mediums in general is that each one has a story to tell. You just don’t think about an MP3 like “Hey I remember the day I logged onto Beatport and downloaded that track”. There is generally a time and a place associated with a piece of vinyl.
Many of my vinyls have stickers from the stores where I purchased them… Bowggy Records, One Unity, etc. Classic record shops in Ottawa that I used to go to weekly to source new tracks. These days you can just go online and buy an MP3 without having to talk to a single person. Without meeting anyone new.
That’s not to say the option wasn’t there to order online when I was buying vinyl. It was, and often I would because the shops just wouldn’t get certain tracks or labels. But it was nice to have the option to go somewhere and buy music among other DJs.
I guess one could argue that you could just go to a Starbucks with your laptop and buy music online in the presence of others, but it’s not the same. The record shop was the place to talk about the newest tracks, production, shows, setup gigs, etc.
So if there’s one thing I miss about vinyl, it’s that. That, and it’s fun to play. Other than that, I hate it! 😉 It’s heavy, it’s expensive and it degrades.
So yeah, this week’s throwback is an ode to vinyl. As I already posted the very first vinyl I bought, I will post what I think might be the second or pretty close to it.
Ed Rush & Optical, Funktion, c. 1998: