“I find myself struggling to say something about vinyl that hasn’t been said by almost every serious musician or fan out there. Sound quality, big artwork, tangibility, nostalgia, lack of cognitive dissonance caused by digital encoding, and quite a few other factors add up to the fact that vinyl is still the ultimate way to experience music as a stand-alone art-form.”
“One could argue that vinyl has a limited dynamic range, is relatively fragile, environmentally wasteful, and not user-friendly, but the consensus among music lovers seems to be that vinyl is still the pinnacle of music-listening and appreciation technology. It’s likely that many of us (myself included) fell in love with music through vinyl when we were young, but I can almost guarantee that at the time, most of us weren’t thinking deeply about different formats or even about sound quality. It was simply how our parents or grandparents listened to music, and it was an activity we all enjoyed. It was an activity that was all about the music, and captured our attention and respect.
I was a teenager during the time that iPods and laptops were becoming common possessions among middle-class folk, and shortly after I had acquired these devices my dad and I had to move to a smaller space where there was no room for those records. He sold them for 25 or 50 cents each, and even at that price, they weren’t easy to get rid of. I think some of them ended up in the dumpster.
Vinyl hadn’t been in high demand for many years, and eventually CDs began to lose their relevance. Frankly, I didn’t care. I thought it was great that all of those space-consuming records could all be in a tiny hard-drive that you could take with you anywhere. I was moving back and forth between my parent’s houses every week, and I could easily bring my music with me anywhere. Music was a generally introverted experience for me, and I found myself falling in love with songwriting and lyricism more than the sonic attributes of the recordings or the quality of the sound. For these purposes, my earbuds were more than enough, and in many ways they still are.
As soon as I picked up the guitar and bass, I began to integrate myself into the Santa Fe music scene by sitting in with a lot of local folk music jams, and I found out that live performances were really what I was interested in. This made the format of recorded music even less important. I was interested in the interaction, sense of community, and a sort of shared heritage between the musicians. Luckily, Santa Fe had an abundance of opportunities for me to satisfy that interest. Sitting in with local bands became somewhat commonplace, and most local musicians all knew the same songs, and most of the time, the audiences would also be able to sing along as well. I found this to be especially so at the Bob Dylan Brunch that was hosted every Sunday at the Cowgirl Hall Of Fame by Joe West, Josh Martin, Arne Bey, and Margaret Burke. It was a weekly celebration of some of the greatest songs ever written, and every time I attended or played, I felt a sense of togetherness and connection to fellow human beings that could not be achieved by any other activity.
Eventually, it became time to move on from Santa Fe, as I made a last-minute decision to attend music school in California. I made the assumption that this kind of experience would be immediately attainable there. I was going to be in the same building as more than a thousand other musicians for most of the day, and I was going to be living in a town where tens of thousands of people all musical ambitions. I couldn’t have been more surprised at what I actually found. In my guitar classes, I was lucky to find another person who knew how to play more than three or four songs, and even if they did, they had little to no experience playing with other people. Jam sessions were just an excuse for people to show off their guitar chops or to practice exercises for upcoming tests. Nothing could have been more boring. The music scene was also entirely exclusive. Everyone was competing for attention during their thirty minutes on a stage that they had paid outrageous amounts of money for the promoter to appear upon. Even the popularity of folk-influenced music at the time couldn’t change the cold atmosphere of the Los Angeles music scene. It seemed like music was the last thing on people’s minds. Business, marketing, Billboard charts, and especially image were paramount and they seemed to overshadow everything that made me interested in music in the first place.
After a few years of adjusting to this continual culture-shock, I found myself becoming interested in recording and listening to recorded music. Recordings were my only remaining connection to what I love about music with the exception of the few people that I was playing in a bands with, and the small group of songwriters that I had befriended for a year or so. I can’t give enough credit to Jack White for rekindling my interest in vinyl. When the Blunderbuss album came out, I became much more interested in his philosophies and approach to making music. There was a life in his recordings that reminded me of that live atmosphere that I had been missing since I moved to Los Angeles.
These explorations lead me to buying my first turntable, and I started my collection with the first eight Bob Dylan albums in mono. I found that the music had a life to it that I felt was missing from everything I was hearing in most of the clubs. More importantly, I was able to invite people to my apartment, and we would just sit and listen for hours. I experienced that sense of community and adoration for music that I felt was so greatly lacking from my new home.
The vinyl made the music seem grandiose and important. Because of my unstable floors, you even had to walk around the apartment carefully in order to prevent the record from skipping. It made listening music an event, and it forced a respect for the fact that a record was playing. I’ve since found that my modest record collection has deepened my own respect for the music. I feel a true sense of ownership and connection to my records that I simply cannot achieve with Spotify (even though I am a regular user of that service). This is why I value vinyl records. It connects people through the music by making the music feel grandiose and special. In the end, it gets me to closest to that feeling that good live music gives me, and allows me to share it with anyone else who is in the room with me.
I’m very excited to say that we are releasing the first Will and the Won’ts single “Wake Up Clean” on vinyl, and I hope that all of our music will be released on that format in the future… At least until something better comes along.”
—Will Risbourg
