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By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA
News Editor
January 10, 2007
‘Will it go ’round in circles?’
— Billy Preston
Vinyl is getting its groove back.
Billy Preston died at age 60 late last year, but owners of LPs can
follow another line from the great soul singer — “I’m gonna let the
music move me around ...”
The LP keeps going ’round in circles, as music medium or art form,
despite once being consigned, prematurely, to the same techno
graveyard as BetaMax and 8-track.
Combination CD player-turntables are affordable and easy to find at
stores in the Gorge, and more expensive turntables designed for
digital transfer are helping longtime LP owners update their
collections.
In 2007 downloading has taken control as the main means of acquiring
and storing music. CDs that pushed aside LPs and cassettes in the
1980s (and reel-to-reel — remember that?) are on the wane.
Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter Mossberg wrote recently of
devices “designed to bring new life to the old 45s and LPs that
boomers cherish, allowing those oldies to migrate to CD players,
computers and iPods.”
They sell for $200 to $400, allowing recording from vinyl to CDs or
into computers. Some are equipped with USB cables that plug directly
into a computer.
With the help of such new technology or their simple retro appeal, and
plenty or reasons in between, LPs with their miniscule grooves have
formed a niche from which they likely will never leave.
On your wall or on your turntable, the shine is still on vinyl.
“Records,” or “albums,” as they are alternately, and loosely, called,
helped stimulate imaginations when they were the main means of playing
pre-recorded music.
Now, they still have a hold on imaginations, and memories, as can be
seen at two downtown Hood River businesses owned by 30-year-olds.
*****
But first, a bit of history, courtesy of writer Chin Wong, in the Dec.
19 online edition of the Philippines’ Manila, Standard:
“For the benefit of younger readers who may never have experienced
this, a long-playing record or LP was about a foot in diameter and had
a hole right in the middle of it to keep it in place on a phonograph’s
spinning turntable.
“Each side generally held 15 to 20 minutes of music, and you have to
flip the record around to play Side B —- also called the flip side.”
As John W. Barth put it in a Dec. 3, 2006, edition of the
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Journal, “Used vinyl LPs offer music lovers a
chance to connect with a past that existed before the invention of
CDs.” He quotes record store owner Rick Lange: “It’s big and shiny.
Vinyl tastes good. Vinyl is warm. CDs are cold.”
*****
Christine Hoag and Kyle Fisher both grew up in the CD era, but both
hold an appreciation for the attraction, value and beauty of vinyl
records and their vivid covers, many of which are considered cultural
expressions, or art, or both.
“LP covers have some the best art there is, I think,” said Hoag. “They
are a real defining part of what the music is all about.
“LPs were the CDs of the day; they were what people listened to,” she
said.
Which inspired her to show off LP covers. Dozens of them line the
walls of the Oak Street business.
Dog River opened in 2004. When Hoag was planning the café with
co-owners Lennis Herberger and Nate DeVol, she knew she would decorate
it with LPs.
Hoag originally planned to play nothing but LPs in the cafe, but has
yet to find the right 1960s Hi--Fi console (they came the size of
small sofas) to power the music, so Hoag and Herberger and DeVol went
with a CD system.
The art does the speaking instead.
*****
CDs are also prominently displayed at a business around the corner
from Dog River. Fisher opened Mobius Records in November 2004, and
while he plans to close on March 1, the small shop at State and Fourth
has evolved into a plentiful — and eclectic — source of LPs.
(In Hood River, two other stores have large selections of CDs, but no
LPs: Zeman’s Music on West Cascade and Wal-Mart.)
Fisher said vinyl is in demand.
“Selling vinyl is basically what kept me in business for the last
three months (of 2006) before the Christmas rush, when I started
selling a lot of CDs again.”
What started as 100 or so LPs on one table has expanded to a far
longer table, and, more importantly, LPs for sale dominate the walls
of the store. Most sell for $5 to $15. When he started they were $1
each, but as demand and seller savvy has grown, he pays more to buy
most records.
Most people bring in albums “in stacks,” Fisher said,.
“They come in saying, ‘These were in my attic.’”
Classic rock albums often come in “trashed,” while classical albums
generally are in good to mint condition Fisher noted.
Many albums he sells are worth less than $5, but a few are valued at
$50-$70.
Fisher has a few for sale in that price range (a $75 Cheech and Chong
comedy album being his most expensive) but often when someone comes in
with a truly valuable record to sell, he urges them to list it on eBay
because they can get a better price than he can pay. (Currently, there
are more than 10,000 LPs for sale on eBay.)
Fisher said that last year when LP sales kept increasing, he decided
to mount them on the walls, for display purposes and because he knew
people enjoyed the art work.
Mobius carries everything from thrash metal to spoken word, with heavy
doses of rock and roll, country, jazz, and classical. Oddities include
“Blazermania,” a recording of Bill Schonley’s play-by-play from the
Portland Blazers’ 1976-77 NBA Championship year, and “Reflections on
the Gift of A Watermelon Pickle,” poetry readings by famous authors.
In the same used section with symphonies by Antonin Dvorak is “Good
Morning, Dear Lord,” by Johnny Mathis. On the wall next to Billie
Holiday are REM and Johnny Carson.
But LPs are also the wave of the future. Rock bands, typically on
independent labels, are issuing LP-only recordings, or as
special-edition versions of what’s on the CDs.
“That way they can kind of say thank you to the hard-core fans,”
Fisher said.
He points to the wall and a shamrock-decked disc by Celtic punk band
Flogging Mollies, and another by the band Ensign, with the label,
“limited edition of 500” pressed on tan vinyl.
The color is a tame one compared to the bright blues, reds and yellows
of other newly issued color vinyl discs that Fisher said are popular
with younger collectors. They contain the same music and play the same
way as the typical black discs, but have a strong visual appeal.
Fisher is selling Mobius and will close in March 1, to spend more time
with his family and concentrate on his concert promotion business. But
he remains bullish on record sales — particularly LPs.
“It’s going to keep going. It’s been on the rise slowly for the past
five years.”
*****
For Hoag, LPs have a past, present and future in her café.
Some of the covers, from her personal collection and some she bought
at Goodwill, contain the albums themselves. “A month after the café
opened a woman come in with a stack of album covers and asked, ‘Do you
want these?’” Hoag said. “I said, ‘I sure do.’” Like the ones she
brought in, they were mostly classic albums from the rock and jazz
genres.
The album covers “are great conversation starters,” Hoag said. “People
have met and really gotten into fun discussions about certain album
covers.
“There is a kind of nostalgia in them that everyone can relate to —
it’s that comfortable feeling of when you had that record player back
in the day ...”
Hoag said she has seen stronger emotional responses in men than women.
“Men get emotional, more than the woman do, which I find interesting.
It’s the men who are moved by the fact that we have a record
collection.”
For Hoag, emotional connections to LPs run deep. Hoag has a brother,
Bob, who makes his living in Arizona as a record producer and
musician, specializing in vinyl recordings. The album cover on display
in her café that most resonates for her is one behind the counter: the
soundtrack to “Flashdance” — a 1983 film about a music-loving young
woman in Pittsburgh, Hoag’s hometown.
She grew up listening to her parents’ collections of LPs, and fondly
remembers her father lying on the living room couch, listening to rock
music with the volume up.
*****
As the Manila writer Wong wrote: “This was analog technology through
and through. Sound was miraculously produced by a stylus or a needle
running along the grooves of a record.
“There was something wonderfully exciting about bringing home an LP
and slitting open the shrink wrap plastic to get at the prize inside —
an excitement that was missing from the next popular analog medium for
music, cassette tapes ...”
(And so, I might add, with CDs.) |
