Addiction Relapse

It has been some time since i finally paid off my debt from my first major foray into full blown Vinyl Junkie status, the 200+ dollar a week habit that would make most coke heads look like amateurs.  I'm not talking about some designer drug addiction I'm talking about a musical format addiction that runs so deep your mind starts to believe that paying 20$ for a single vinyl makes sense in this digital age of illegal downloads.

I have spent a lot of time recently trying to figure out where this all started with,  and why i continue to cling to a format that most of the mainstream believe to be obsolete,  the hipster class don't understand,  and the purists proclaim to be the only truly accurate recording medium.  Sound quality arguments aside (which are moot unless you are one of the few who actually own a 6000+ dollar fully analogue hi-fi stereo system) the source of my problems come down to two things.....  the familiar and the tangible.  There are two things i can always remember being in my house throughout my childhood: a vast assortment of vinyl records and computers (which would explain my love of all things electronica).  Growing up in a musical household,  i have fond memories of playing along to early eagles albums with my dad,  rocking out to Phil Collins' "in the air tonight" while building forts in my basement or having the constant soundtrack of James Taylor playing in the background.  Before the CD player or MP3 player were prevalent,  music listening was far more engaging than it is today.  I used to spend hours in front of my dad's stereo playing record after record,  sometimes playing along with the music on my guitars.  Modern formats have lost some of that engagement as i feel we tend to let music take a background role to our everyday tasks be it in the car, at the gym,  or just background noise in the house.

The second source of love of the vinyl media is the tangible essence of the recordings.  Mp3's are nothing by a binary data stream,  a collection of data that has no volume, no physical presence.  CD collections too often dissapear in to binder catalogs,  with no artwork,  and minimal space requirements...  A healthy vinyl addiction inevitably leads to warehousing issues (i have a whole room devoted to my collection),  but when you walk past a record collection,  you cannot help but notice its large and in charge status.

Fast forward to today:  my personal collection started back in 2001-2002  during my DJ phase  and was almost exclusively electronica.  I probably have a good 10K  tied up in vinyl covering a full breadth of genres such as Trance, Techno, Progressive, House, and Breaks.  In 2006 i curbed my vinyl acquisitions in the hopes of completing my university degree (which i did).  Recently,  thanks in part to my parents gifting me with their vinyl collection for a christmas present,  I have rekindled my strange disorder with fervor.  My goal now is to posses the albums and singles that i consider to be landmarks of their type or ones that have personal sentimental value for me. 

Some of my latest additions:
Link Wray and the Wraymen - The Rumble/The Swag 7" 45RPM Single - Cadence Records 1958
      -I had to order this one from the UK as it is difficult to find and pretty rare.  This single was actually banned from airplay in many parts of the US when it was originally released because even as an instrumental,  it possessed that raw rebellious attitude that can almost be likened to punk rock.

Jimi Hendrix - In the West - 1972 12" LP
     -While not rare,  this is one of the best hendrix live LP's around. 


Otis Reading - Sittin' on the dock of the bay
     - This is one of the songs that would be included on my fathers greatest hits album.  I can't remember a time when my dad wouldn't start playing this on his old Aria 12 string acoustic.  It is still a song that we will jam with together when we get into the scotch.