“I remember my Dad bought one of those first generation CD player/ vinyl record players. It practically took up the entire wall of our living room.”
“At the same time my sister had this friend that was in the process of going on some sort of cross-country, life-discovery trip, and had left a few of her favorite records for us to keep. These were probably the first records I fell in love with. From Queen, to a sampler record of David Bowie’s Heroes, to the Carpenters’ Greatest Hits, I poured over those songs.
Over time, technology demanded my family update our systems. Maybe five or six years after purchasing what we called “The Big Kahuna,” my father had settled on a smaller, more efficient CD player. Instead of getting rid of the Kahuna, he let me put it in my room. At this point I had already pulled out a few older boxes from our basement of records, but hadn’t gotten a chance to listen to them. Having access to the record player in my room opened up a new world for me in many ways, allowing me to absorb some of these hidden treasures we had stored away with other long forgotten things.
I fell in love with Sam and Dave, Aretha Franklin, Billy Holiday, Elvis, and, one of my all time favorites, Etta James. Most of the time I would fall asleep to these records, waking to hear the sound of the vinyl spinning on the player.
That’s when I knew a song or an album was really good. It gives me a sense of nostalgia about that time in my life, when I could hear that sound, the sound of the finished record spinning, waiting to be restarted. It’s something you can’t quite compare to anything else.”
—Charles Maven
