Re-Discovering Records (2008)

From 2008 until 2014, I wrote a blog called Vinyl Record Architect. Thanks to misdirected emails and the way things work in the cloud, the blog was removed, unsaved. Fortunately, I had started to save selected blog entries - my favorites, I guess. With the launch of this Vinyl Architect blog, I plan to periodically revisit some of my favorites, starting with this one, sort of my vinyl origin story.

NB: If you want to hear some of the music mentioned in this and other blog entries, look for me on Spotify and look up the playlist with the same title...

Re-Discovering Records (2008) 
Parallel lines converge when you get far enough away.

A few years ago when my father died and my mom got sick, we sold their house and I collected my old records and started to listen to them again. I found a turntable, some funky little speakers and an Aiwa bookshelf stereo system and began to listen again to the first records I had ever owned. Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends. James Taylor. Joni Mitchell. Doug Sahm and His band - the one with Dylan sitting in. Arlo Guthrie. Ry Cooder. It was a strange experience of past and present, nostalgia mixed with new pleasures. The records sounded great to my ears, warmer than CDs or downloads. The skips and pops enhanced the experience. They sounded like survivors.

So, every weekend I listened. I sat on the floor next to the row of records like I had when I was a kid and studied the record covers and the inner sleeves. The Warner Reprise records - like Arlo's, for instance - had sleeves that advertised the label's 'Loss Leaders,' a series of $2 double album compilations.

At around the same time, I discovered the Rhinocast - Rhino Records' Podcast - and the Bob Lefsetz Letter. I downloaded every one and I obsessed over Lefsetz' stories of his life intertwined with music. Oddly enough, one of his podcasts featured the 'Loss Leaders.' I was intrigued. I had never bought them when they were being released, but I went online and ordered the first....it arrived a week or so later.

On a whim one day, I walked down the street to Jerry's Records and found that he had almost all the 'Loss Leaders' for sale. I selected a bunch and brought them home. I was hooked.

The thing about the 'Loss Leaders' that was so much fun was the weird juxtaposition of then mostly undiscovered talents. From 1969 through the early 1980s, they released at least one a year - at first they were filled with strange characters, pop stars, rockers, folkies, hippies, weirdos, and blues artists. As I listened to one after another, I realized how much music I had missed and how much fun it could be to explore this era that I was a little to young to get at the time.

Now a week doesn't go by that I don't bring home an old vinyl record or two or three, orphaned to Jerry's or the Attic in Millvale, or the Salvation Army or Half Price Books.

My wife just smiles, rolls her eyes, and sighs. Safer than a motorcycle and preferable to a girlfriend I think she says.