“Vinyl has always meant many things to me; a place to hide, a sonic time machine into musical history, a warm blanket to keep me company during a winter depression. Other times it was a rolling tray or another fucking box to lug up the walk-up of my new apartment, but don’t let the cynicism fool you. I wouldn’t be carrying that box up the stairs if I didn’t need it.”
“My record collection represents thousands of hours of data that I have programmed into my mind to help me appreciate the differences between music’s cultures, people, and radical individuality. Some records kept me company, others made me laugh like my prized lemon yellow picture disk of Richard Prior’s That N***a’s Crazy, and some I just can’t listen to anymore because they remind me of some girl who’s not around anymore, like Disintegration or Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, the soundtrack to many an unfortunate piece of my personal history.
My exposure to vinyl, even before my beloved Jimi Hendrix blew my tiny little wig off, was probably The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album, as that was the only time of the year my father was drunk enough to let me play with the record player, or his beloved yet small collection of killer pop records, many of which were for his band to learn covers.
I got so into that Christmas record I used to play it year-round. I could not believe the songwriting, or how difficult it seemed to be for me to get the needle on the groove. It was like a video game! That’s where I heard “Wild Thing” for the first time and the genius of the Michael Jackson recordings.
At this point I still had no dough to buy my own records, so I had to rely on my father’s taste. One day I found myself working a dead-end job as a 15-year-old at Dunkin Donuts. I heard David Bowie come on the oldies station and I damn near lost my mind. I heard the song “Changes,” and I could not believe the funky, snarky cabaret vocal style over the piano driven pop sensibilities.
That day I marched right over to the music store at the mall, and the only piece of Bowie that this crappy place even had, luckily, turned out to be Bowie Live in Santa Monica ’72 on CD with an accompanying bonus vinyl!
That night when I got home I stole my grandmother’s record player and headed to the basement. It was just me, the record player, and David Bowie. Pretty soon I would be cutting my shirts into scoop necks, copping girls’ haircuts, and borrowing my sister’s belts, but that’s neither here nor there.
My interest in vinyl exploded after that, leading me to spend hours upon hours flipping through stacks looking for Bauhaus singles, Iggy Pop records, and Lou Reed anything! I’m a sucker for ritual, and there was nothing like going hunting for that perfect analog experience to take home to my literal man cave in my parents’ basement where I would pore over every word printed on the jacket, memorizing the names of the players, the producers, the record labels, and the inside jokes. I would play them slowly or backwards looking for hidden messages and subliminal satanic spells!
I still long for the old days of putting a lil square piece of paper on my tongue and burning a whole day looking through crates at the now defunct Second Coming Records in Cambridge Massachusetts and the Davis Square Salvation Army.”
—Greg Ferreira
The Bushwick Hotel’s “Hard Times” EP arrives in stores on February 28, 2017.
