Off the Record

Welcome to the wasteland!

Given recent heated discussions, I figured it would be best to bring the temperature down a little, and talk about something a bit lighter. We can all use a break every now and then, right? In fact, I wanted to talk a bit about physical media in a way that does not get talked about much anymore. Let's not talk about practicality or physical quality, but something else entirely. I want to show in example of what makes it special. The above video is tangentially related more to show how little I'll be talking about audio quality in today's topic, because I think too many get hung up on it.

For anyone who has followed me for any amount of time, you are aware that I am big into music. Since I started being able to as a kid back in the '90s, I have amassed a pretty good CD collection that, despite bizarre attempts at fearmongering in recent years, is still perfectly functional today. Mostly because I take care of them. Regardless, this is to say I've been at the game for around three decades at this point. While my CD collection is more or less complete (I still have a few more Rhapsody albums to get), I still go out of my way to try to hear stuff I've never heard before.

I tend to focus more on rock music and its many subgenre and spinoffs. It's just what has always clicked with me the most.

Not too long ago, I had an epiphany. I realized that with vinyl records becoming ubiquitous and affordable for the first time since before I'd actually started collecting music, I could finally get into them myself. Obviously I wouldn't be able to ever match my CD collection, but I didn't want to. There was no reason for that. I had always wanted to get my absolute favorite albums in the format, and now was my chance. So, I went for it.

You see, for anyone younger than Gen X, vinyl has been a dead format for the majority of our lives. It was elbowed out in the late 20th century format wars by CDs (cassettes suffered the same fate) as antiquated and limiting. It was not progressive enough and there were too many rough edges in the format. Records were clunkier, held less music, were more fragile, and a bit of a pain to store. CDs, they said, would solve all those problems. They did. CDs are easy to use, hold twice as much music as a vinyl, are much more durable, and very easy to store. There's a good reason mine are still in pristine condition, some bad jewel cases aside. Essentially, CDs were the most obvious step forward, the progressive choice for music listening. Eventually that would move over to streaming, but as far as physical media went, CDs were considered it.

Then it might shock you to hear this as someone who hadn't heard vinyl since I was a child and never owned any myself before relatively recently that I actually think it is the greatest physical format for listening to music and that all its limitations are its strengths. And it's not for the reasons you might think.

The weaknesses of vinyl are actually its strengths. I know that's confusing. You're going to have to put up with my logic as I explain it.

The reason for this is that all the conveniences of CDs are actually a drawback for the listening experience that only multiplied when streaming came along. In essence it was a downhill slide to get here, though I will admit that CDs and the like do have their uses for travel or exercise. That said, for listening to music as an activity? They are not as good as vinyl. Let me explain just why that might be with a few points you might not have considered.

If you've never used vinyl before then you might be surprised as to how much set up there is to getting one to play. Slide the record from its sleeve, keep your fingers away from the surface as you lower it on the turntable, and then start it up. But of course it doesn't quite end there. You have to put on Side A and then lower the arm (making sure the needle isn't covered first), delicately onto the record. Did it right? Congrats, it's time to listen to the first side . . . of two. Vinyl rarely contains more than 20-25 minutes a side, which means you are going to have to stick close to the player and make sure you're there for all of it. Also, of course, to make sure no loud stomping or pushing of heavy furniture happens nearby to disturb the record or potentially cause skipping. This does not afford you the chance to wander off to do anything else. You will be there for the 20 minutes or so of Side A, paying attention. After this, you will do it again with Side B, making sure you're paying attention to the entire album. Here it is time to finally lift the arm and remove the record, once again handling it delicately and avoiding dust and dirt (or possibly cleaning it with your brush) before putting it away again.

Get all that? It's a process.

The end result of all this inconvenience other mediums don't offer? You will be paying attention to the music first and foremost above all else. Nothing else will take precedence, guaranteed. You cannot afford to zone out around a vinyl record, which makes you need to give it all your focus. It's too delicate to be left alone for too long.

All this is why vinyl is the best musical format. The reason is it makes the listener prioritize the music and listening experience over all else, and it's the only format that does this short of attending a live show. When you're putting on a record it is because you want to listen to the record. The lack of skipping tracks, of wandering off, of putting it in the background, means appreciation of the music comes first. It will always have your priority. Yes, vinyl's sound is less flat and more rounded and spacious than digital files are, and that could be an argument itself but the real difference is in how much attention each format must be given.

A sample of my own collection

As an example of my annoying ramble above, let me tell you a little tale. One of the records I have is Hysteria by Def Leppard. You can see my copy right there in the picture. This is a 12 song album that is over an hour long. Naturally, this means modern releases wisely split it across two records, effectively making it a double album. This is an immediate improvement, even despite improved sound quality. The above process of playing all four sides made me give the album my full attention for the first time in ages. No skipping songs, no letting it fall to the background as I find myself doing something else with my free time, and no pausing it for whatever random reason I feel like I had to sit there and listen, really listen, and hear all the bells and whistles and incredible songwriting that album is filled with. As I did so I felt myself pulled into the music and the tone the band sets, and engrossed the entire time making me appreciate everything about the craft, the energy, and the hooks, all the more. It turned what I thought was a 10/10 album into an 11/10 one. It effectively made me think an album I already thought was perfect even better. All of this could only happen because of the limitations vinyl set on me as well as the different presentation of audio than what I'm used to.

It started to make sense why back in the day music was treated as more of an event, why they had record listening parties and why kids would spend time just listening to records at friend's houses: all things no one does anymore. Sure, you can have a listening party on bandcamp, but it's hardly the same thing as being in the same room and having to concentrate on all the contours of the specific sonic presentation smacking you in the face while minding the limitations to keep you focused. Without that there is a high risk of music becoming a background novelty, which is more or less what it's become today since vinyl fell away.

The size of the format itself also contributes to it. Vinyl records are large, attention grabbing, and very in your face. They almost demand to take all your attention when you look in their direction. On top of that, they are the hardest to store and take care of, as well. Basically, it's a form tailor made to be intimidating, which, oddly enough, is something that makes them all the more compelling. The inconvenience is appreciated.

This isn't so much a music hipster thing, I'm not really going on about vinyl being "warmer" as the cliche goes, but in how everything about it prioritizes the importance of its own artform before anything else. That's its biggest strength that no one really brings up.

Even the idea that the storage space is overly miniscule and was improved on with CD and then that was improved on with unlimited streaming is incorrect. Almost all of the best albums worth hearing are under 50 minutes long. In the CD era, because the limit was increased to nearly 80 minutes, albums started to become loaded with filler. This made heavy use of the track skip feature CDs added and took away from the experience described above. It made the album look weaker and feel more disposable. The fact is that the limitation of the vinyl gave albums their perfect length. A 40 minute album is perfectly paced, coinciding, incidentally, with most live shows if you take out banter and general set up. Exceptions like the above Hysteria, an album over that limit, still benefits from the fact that it earns its mammoth length: there's no filler on it at all.

Your space on a record is limited, so you have to dredge up your best material for it and be aware that the audience will be paying close attention to it due to the nature of vinyl. This sets a higher bar for music and is in fact a good reason why Classic Rock has the name it has.

Even in the CD era, albums that did not have vinyl as their primary release format, or sometimes not even one at all (essentially the early 90s through the late '00s, almost two decades), the ones that aged the best are ones that still, for one reason or another, adhered to the old rule set by the format. The best albums didn't "fill up the CD" just because they could have.

This means when these sorts of albums actually get a vinyl release (think albums like The Strokes' Room on Fire, Less Than Jake's Hello Rockview, Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American, or the White Stripes' White Blood Cells), they fit it like a glove. Even the better longer albums transition over to becoming great double albums (think Alice in Chain's Dirt, Soundgarden's Superunknown, Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf, or White Stripes' Elephant) like they were always meant to be that in the first place. The pacing set by the limitations of the form not only make it more digestible, but allow more concentration and appreciation for what is being done. This is a good sign that vinyl got it right ages before we figured it out. We were just blinded by new tech and progress, which is a very common 20th century habit we still haven't broken.

Some could make the case that vinyl is only come back because of hipsterism, but that doesn't really explain it's unavailability during the peak hipster years of the '00s and why now it's only coming back in a big way now. If anytime would have been the time for that it would have been the post-High Fidelity snarky Scott Pilgrim era. But that never really took, did it? The reason is because younger generations want the inconveniences they never had, and older audiences are missing it now more than ever. It just doesn't hit as hard with the way things are. Experiencing what you love in a more involved way is always a good way to learn just how you like it.

All of this is a long way to say that convenience has devalued a lot of our artforms. The base level for engaging with art used to require a level of inconvenience which played into engagement, which meant most people put up with it, and they benefited. What we forgot is that sometimes inconveniences aren't bad things. Fishing out a cartridge to stick into your SNES or disc into your PS2. Taking out a tape or disc to slot into your player to watch a movie (and then either rewind or dig through menus). Rushing to catch a TV show on at a specific time or else hope for reruns in the summer. Picking up a paperback or hardcover to flip through and set down with a bookmark. These could be seen as mildly annoying or even frustrating, especially as opposed to how plug and play everything is in Current Year, but they also made these things more engaging and participatory for the audience. And most of these annoyances are just little things, but it's the little things that add up to the total and greater experience.

The easier and more convenient all these things have made things, the more it all gets streamlined into an app on a device to press and go, the less we care and the less we care about creating or preserving these forms, because now they're little more than distraction from mundanity, not art to engage or consider. This is the core of what modern slop is and why it's so hard to define: it's the end result of convenience culture, it doesn't spring out of anything else. Everything has been reduced to a dopamine hit with the least amount of effort or backlash.

To create a future of art that is meaningful, that can connect, and can grow, the old ways have to be understood, and inconvenience must no longer be seen as the greatest evil like it currently is. The warts and the difficulties are part of the experience: they add up to the greater whole. Taking that away simply takes away part of the core experience. It can't really be ignored any longer.

Life isn't convenience, and it never will be. No utopia or perfect world is ever coming. Accept the warts and realize that sometimes they aren't really warts at all. You're just too focused on the tree instead of the forest.

What we need is something real, and that means annoyances. We ain't in Heaven folks, not yet, so get used to it. We're gonna be here a while, so let's make it count.

And listen to Hysteria. It holds up great.

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