Vinyl Records
When I knew I was going to start The Thruline podcast I knew I wanted to do an episode on vinyl, and when Marc Maron said he would do the podcast I knew I wanted it to be the first. I grew up in what I would call a “Royal Tennenbaumy” house. And if you’ve never seen Royal Tennenbaums you should stop reading this right now and go watch it, it’s an amazing movie. What I mean is that everyone was very creative. It wasn’t a big house but it had a lot of rooms.
I was the youngest of four which meant I was always running around trying to get involved with whatever my brother and sisters were getting involved in. The den was where the tv was but that wasn’t on very much, especially with no cable so usually you could find someone reading in there. The living room was usually meant for company but in the winter it was the coziest room with a fireplace and a giant radiator that hissed and clanked. You could usually find someone on the couch in front of the big window in winter praying for snow. It also housed the piano where my sister would practice and my mom would play through the night when we went to bed.
There was a breezeway between the garage and the house which was where you could find my brother drawing in the summer and for a short time where he slept. He and I shared a room till we hit our teens and he needed some space. So he tried the breezeway, the basement and the hall closet! We would literally slide the door shut while he slept on a mattress on the floor. I loved that house, it had little nooks and crannies. I always loved experiencing each room. Lay on the couch in the living room, do home work at the dinning room table, steal clothes from my brother’s room, try to figure out how to get the tiny TV in my sister’s room to work and hide in the make shift attic/crawl space in my Mom’s room. But what I really loved and was always obsessed with were my oldest sister vinyl records.
She was the only one in the family that ever had records. Maybe because she was the oldest and had a job? Or because my other sister was never into music and was super cheap! Not in a bad way but she saved from day one, every thing she ever bought was introduced with, “I got this on sale…” And by the time my brother had money to buy music we were onto cassettes.
My sister’s records were forbidden. They were stacked side by side in crates in her room. She had The Police, Queen and Billy Joel. She loved Billy Joel, so much so that when her high school boyfriend gave her a dog they named it after Billy Joel’s drummer. Yeah, they were die hards. My mother only listened to classical music, then and now! There was no family stereo so if you wanted your own music you had to buy it and buy the thing to play it on! And since I was the youngest with no money I didn’t get access to any music. And by no means was I an obedient kid but I don’t ever remember playing a single record on her record player, I feared her wrath! So I would wait for the days she was playing and see if I could hang in her room. She went to college when I was 9 and so did her records.
About 10 years ago vinyl started making a comeback but I never felt like I had a place in the vinyl world. By that I mean I didn’t feel cool enough to have vinyl. I always thought you needed to know about music to listen to vinyl. I don’t wear jean jackets and I don’t know anything about cars, how could I be a vinyl guy? But finally I worked up the courage and bought some records. I didn’t have a record player but I had vinyl, as if I was willing it into my life. Finally one night a friend gifted me his “vert” and I was off and running. (A vert is a vertical record player that was cool in the 80’s and super high maintenance now, Thanks Logan Marshall Green!) And now if I pass through my living room and I don’t play a record I feel like I’m letting life escape me.
There’s something so special about putting a record on, sitting back and letting a single artist dj the moment. We are driven to get what we want the second we want it. From food to amazon to songs. You can download any song at any time, you can make a playlist with all your favorite songs and never have to deal with the bad songs from the B side. But what about those B side songs? When you take the time to listen to a record you find tiny moments in songs you wouldn’t normally listen to. You broaden your spectrum and start hearing sounds you never heard before, not just in that song but in all songs. Records are a great step back in time to when life dictated you more than you dictated it. I say all this with the littlest of knowledge on vinyl or music for that matter. Which is why I thought having vinyl head Marc Maron and record store chain owner Jimmy Greenwood was a great combination. For me life is about growing, learning and filling your world with people that will enrich and broaden your perspective. And in my case enrich the podcast.
Please stop over to “The Thruline” and give it a listen. And if you like the episode then stop by the Patreon and hear the full hour interview with each guest. There is so much I don’t know about and so much I want to know so I am hoping that this podcast doesn’t just enrich my life but yours as well. My goal is to always get the best guests I can, with the most random or interesting topics and deliver a podcast that entertains and informs. I’m an old time guy who lives in a digital world, please excuse me.
