I am an city person living in a small town. Small towns are easy, comfortable, everything is no more than a 15 minute drive and I can walk into town or to work in 20 minutes, a relaxed stroll through an old church yard, by the river and through a park. From anywhere you can sense the end of the town; encircled by green fields and hills, the buildings are subdued by the sky. This is a comforting scale to some people but to me feels enclosed, constrained and visible.
Every now and then I have to run away to a city to get a fix of population and the anonymity that comes with the potential for getting lost, to spend some time sitting in a cafe with no chance of meeting anyone I know.
Every now and then I have to run away to a city to get a fix of population and the anonymity that comes with the potential for getting lost, to spend some time sitting in a cafe with no chance of meeting anyone I know.
And then there are second-hand record shops.
A couple of months ago, I got hold of an old turntable and began the therapeutic activity of building a collection. The urge to collect to took me by surprise, I have never collected, never organised or categorised or aspired to own a complete set of anything. My inability to maintain any habit, from the time I get into work to where I leave my keys, is something that leads my wife to suggest that a little touch of obsessive compulsive disorder might be no bad thing.
All sorts of hi fi audiophile types will maintain that it is the analogue connection between the music and the grooves that is responsible for the trend of returning to a vinyl, as it provides a wider and more spacious sound than the compressed flatness of digital recording. They may be right, but for me the attractions are more human:
1. In a charity shop, for the price of a cappuccino you stand a chance of finding something that will give you almost endless pleasure, something that you can't buy on Amazon, Or despite checking the surface for damage, you may end up with something that you bin disappointedly because it crackles and distorts. It's a gamble, there is no way of knowing for sure until the needle drops.
2. If you do find something classic, perfect and undamaged, you know that someone took care of it and its weight and sound has been passed on in a way that CDs and MP3s are unable to possess,
A couple of months ago, I got hold of an old turntable and began the therapeutic activity of building a collection. The urge to collect to took me by surprise, I have never collected, never organised or categorised or aspired to own a complete set of anything. My inability to maintain any habit, from the time I get into work to where I leave my keys, is something that leads my wife to suggest that a little touch of obsessive compulsive disorder might be no bad thing.
All sorts of hi fi audiophile types will maintain that it is the analogue connection between the music and the grooves that is responsible for the trend of returning to a vinyl, as it provides a wider and more spacious sound than the compressed flatness of digital recording. They may be right, but for me the attractions are more human:
1. In a charity shop, for the price of a cappuccino you stand a chance of finding something that will give you almost endless pleasure, something that you can't buy on Amazon, Or despite checking the surface for damage, you may end up with something that you bin disappointedly because it crackles and distorts. It's a gamble, there is no way of knowing for sure until the needle drops.
2. If you do find something classic, perfect and undamaged, you know that someone took care of it and its weight and sound has been passed on in a way that CDs and MP3s are unable to possess,
For 3.95 I found this and it plays....
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