Giulia., The TVD First Date

“My relationship to vinyl is a weird one, given the fact that I grew up with streaming services and have rarely had to buy music—let alone a hard copy.”

“Growing up, I listened to CDs in my little Walkman and danced in my room while Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” blasted through the shitty speakers of my Hello Kitty CD player (but I was 10, so sound quality meant nothing to me). But by the time I was around 12 or 13, streaming services began taking over, and my short-lived CD phase was over.

That being said, I always knew what vinyl was and how it worked, mainly because of my dad. Not only did we have a record player in our living room that sat on top of a massive collection of hundreds of vinyl records, but my dad was a musician. So our house was always filled with a soundtrack of some sort—usually, him fiddling around at the piano.

I think that because of my upbringing, and the way that sound was so ingrained in our house, music—and the experience of listening to music (which is an experience that we take for granted nowadays because of how easy it is to consume)—is always something I’ve felt very connected to. Though it wasn’t until later that connection started happening with vinyl, it was always there.

Without a doubt, a lot of that connection came from my father and watching how invested he was when he would perform, how ethereal and almost surreal it felt for him. What turned me on to vinyl and truly made me appreciate it was seeing that same surrealism come alive when he listened to certain music.

I knew that performing could transform people, but there was something so beautiful about watching someone listen to a piece of music and feel like they were a kid again. I’m thinking specifically of Jeff Beck’s 1976 album, Wired.

I heard it for the first time in my childhood home a few years back. My dad had just recently “renovated” the record player as it hadn’t been working, and we didn’t use it much. But now fixed, it sat in its new corner as we sat close by, talking, eating, etc. If you’ve ever heard this album, you know what kind of a ride it takes you on and the energy that’s within it.

I remember my dad stopping mid-sentence and just laughing because he’d remembered a moment from his childhood where he and a friend stole his parents’ car, drove somewhere without their license, and got super stoned—because that’s what you did in the ’70s when you were bored and a teenager. That whole night ended up being a nostalgic retelling of my dad’s 1976 because of this record—because of the memories it holds in his brain.

Which is something that, honestly, I only think felt so prevalent that night because of the presence that vinyl holds. There’s something about vinyl that makes you feel like the recording is happening in the room with you, like Jeff Beck is sitting in the chair beside you, solo-ing away. There is a human quality to it that doesn’t exist with CDs or through streaming.

I truly feel like the physicality, weight, and space that a vinyl record occupies is enough to give you a certain attachment to it and to associate certain memories with it—like music often does, it’s just more amplified with vinyl because of the sort of commitment they are to buy, keep and use.

Although this experience wasn’t my first time listening to vinyl, it was the first time it really had an impression on me, which I found pretty important. Since then, I’ve been collecting my own little set of records that will one day (hopefully) turn into the insanity that is my dad’s collection!”
—Giulia.