It's amazing how quickly and uneventfully whole days can sometimes pass. I got up at a reasonable time this morning, spent time looking for jobs, exercising, doing a few bits around the house, nipped to the shops, and now it is already way into the evening. Days all seem the same at the moment. I have also managed to gain a cold again, seemingly on some kind of monthly cycle of getting one, getting over one, having a week so without one, then getting another one.
Today's reason to be cheerful (in an attempt to live up to the premise of this blog), is my rediscovery of vinyl. Recently I've been having problems with a CD player I use in my loft, where I keep all of my music gear and like to hang out listening to records. It has started to stop reading the discs and become almost inoperable in recent weeks. My attempted repair job - whereby I employed my regular method of trying to repair things I knew nothing about, and so took it apart, blew on some of the innards and put it back together again - rendered it entirely inoperable.
I rummaged around in another part of the loft looking for something to replace it with, and managed to put together a mix-match of hi-fi system parts to put something usable together, only I was missing a CD playing part. I did, however, find a record player which I hooked up immediately and delved into a stack of records I found elsewhere in this treasure trove of my family's old crap, and wow, what an experience. I'd never really played vinyl before very much, having grown up when tapes were just being replaced almost exclusively by CDs.
I loved the opening of the complete package, with amazing artwork and readable sleeves. The sliding it from the sleeve and placing the needle on the record was sublime, as was the faint cracking as the first track came into volume. And this was despite the selection of records available, a large chunk of which looking like it must have been from my Mum's record collection - The Monkees, Abba, the Grease soundtrack and loads of bloody Rod Stewart, were all notable by their inclusion - but I found a few more to go with the two or three records I'd bought myself, and amongst them were a load of Springsteen records I hadn't heard before. Spent an hour or so listening to bits and bobs from them and decided to save some for later.
I know a few people who buy a lot of vinyl, and a lot of bands - notably from the indie/punk scene I think - still like to release their stuff on vinyl, and they say that vinyl sounds a lot better than CD or even digital. I'm not so sure of this at all, and think perhaps a lot of their fondness for vinyl in that respect is more out of pomposity than sound quality. But there is a real treat attached to listening to records I think, with just the process of putting it on, and the tangibility of the product. Sadly, since I have got thousands of albums on CD I don't think I'll be switching to vinyl any time soon, but I may well buy the odd one. Just for that extra effect on the experience.
It did make me wonder what the next medium of music will be though. Right now everything is digital, and people seem to download music more than anything else now. CDs are still around but seem to be phasing out - I know a lot of friends who are gradually getting rid of their CDs as they've got digital copies. Before CDs there was the cassette tape, probably the worst sounding and also a real pain in the arse to listen to music on - especially if you wanted to find a certain track on an album or something, and had to spend ages fast forwarding and rewinding until you found it. Before that, of course, there was vinyl for a very long period, and even further back they recorded music onto copper wire.
I hope vinyl carries on in some way or form, as much as I hope CDs, the medium I have grown up listening to music on, will also be remembered fondly.
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