“We weren’t the cool kids in high school. No prom kings, no quarterbacks, no raging weekend parties. When Charlie Robertson got his license and shortly after his late ’70s Buick Regal with Knight Rider lights, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves in the space between Friday’s last bell and Monday morning’s homeroom. Driving to drive was a better option than cartoons, so we just cruised a.m. New Jersey and went from yard sale to yard sale.”
“This was the time to be doing it. It was 1994 and no one could foresee a resurgence in the popularity of LPs, so we were there buying peoples’ memories on the cheap. I recall one yard sale where I got a bunch of Black Sabbath and Sly and the Family Stone records for a quarter from a guy who could have been me with the addition of 25 years, the weight of time and reality on his shoulders, under his eyes.
I had to ask him why he was parting with his vinyl. Barely audible beneath the screams of his children ricocheting off the walls of his suburban New Jersey home, he said, “Time will change a man.” The frailty of his sentence was the only birth control I ever needed and the dawn of an addiction and loyalty to my vinyl.
Anxiety keeps me up at night and still wakes me up early. I drive, yard sales, thrift stores, swap meets, anything to occupy those first sleepless hours of the day. Vinyl has remained relevant to me for so many reasons. Records come with a story. We attach experiences to an LP in a way one can’t with the impersonal impermanence of a download, with the disposable nature of a compact disc.
Every record I’ve acquired has come with a story. I’ve bought collections from people who’ve told me how each item came into their possession, how old they were, where they got it, what it meant to them at the time, the adventures it was the soundtrack for, the loves and abandon. I carry and carry on those same stories. There’s the challenge of it as well. If I want a Thirteenth Floor Elevators record, I type it, I stream it, but the gratification I got when I found it in a dollar bin in San Diego nearly jolted me with heart attack.
One time I was at a yard sale in San Diego and I asked the proprietors if they had any records. Sometimes you have to ask. Sometimes they think records are as out of vogue as using the word “’vogue,” so why would anyone want to pay money for them. The man standing behind me said, “My mom has a bunch of records, here’s her number, she’d probably give them to you if you helped her lift them.”
I called her up and she picked up on the fourth ring. “I’m 82 years old, I’m blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, it might take me a while to lift these things, but if you come over later, I’ll have them out for you.” I told her not to lift a finger. When I arrived, she let me into a garage that looked ravaged by war, there were rusty nails attacking from all angles, broken furniture, splintered into shivs, stacks of dust-covered books and wood that had at one time been intended for some greater purpose than refuse.
I couldn’t see the records at first and questioned the worth of this excursion, pondering the value of sweat currency. After two hours of pulling out everything in the garage with the help of the toughest old lady I ever met, I got to the records. There were 100 Beatles and Stones records, Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, Albert Ayler. All in all there were 1,000 LPs, 300 78s, 500 45s, and a Victrola. “Enjoy” she said.
I helped her clean up the garage and I came by a few times over the years. She’d tell me about my San Diego in the ’40s and ’50s, her packrat husband with eclectic taste who passed and left her with more than she could lift, her upbringing in the south and what it was like to come to California then. An interaction I’d have never had without vinyl. One of many that I am thankful for.”
—Al Howard
The Midnight Pine’s third album, s/t arrives in stores on October 7 via The Redwoods Music.
