Thread: what are you listening to???

Originally Posted by QBronco

Can anyone recommend a good website for vinyl? Everywhere I am looking the prices are sky high.

Discogs

Originally Posted by Hawgdriver

Discogs

Thank you for the recommendation. I will check it ou

Originally Posted by QBronco

Thank you for the recommendation. I will check it ou

Then meet us at http://www.broncosforums.com/forums/...nyl-collection where we let our pretentious vinyl connoisseur-dom run wild!

I've had the most success either finding stuff on the marketplace at discogs, at random small labels, or record stores (maybe not an option for you unless you travel, idk).

Originally Posted by Hawgdriver

Then meet us at http://www.broncosforums.com/forums/...nyl-collection where we let our pretentious vinyl connoisseur-dom run wild!

I've had the most success either finding stuff on the marketplace at discogs, at random small labels, or record stores (maybe not an option for you unless you travel, idk).

I live in a pretty remote location. I like to go to record stores when I get the opportunity to do so.

Discogs is a nice alternative, especially with rare stuff. Its just not always cheap.

Originally Posted by Northman

Discogs is a nice alternative, especially with rare stuff. Its just not always cheap.

Shipping is a pita for sure.

And how come every single copy of The Damned's Black Album is in Europe? 21 copies, cheapest shipping is equal to the cost of the album itself!

Originally Posted by Northman

Discogs is a nice alternative, especially with rare stuff. Its just not always cheap.

Yes, I saw that. Just curious if the advertised condition of the album matches what you are buying?

Originally Posted by aberdien

those kinda look like my speakers! Don't have the fancy tube-amp stuff though.

I like vinyl, but vinyl inflation is real. I'm just waiting for the CD revival.

Hm, actually it's these. Slightly different model.

So audiophile! Much expense!

Originally Posted by aberdien

I like vinyl, but vinyl inflation is real. I'm just waiting for the CD revival.

Apparently cassettes are the new vinyl.

Also--I got in on Rumours at the antique store price!

Getting far afield from the what are you listening to thing...

which for me, at the moment, is actually Sketches of Spain,

but the inflation thing--besides vinyl, golf discs also have this ridiculous secondary market with lot of pockets of wildly overpriced plastic.

Originally Posted by Hawgdriver

Apparently cassettes are the new vinyl.

Cassettes are making a comeback. I am going to set up my old Pioneer tower (bought in the 90s) just to impress guests .

I feel like Steven Hyden and Hawg would have some very good music convos if they ever got together.

Compact discs may be more out of vogue than ever, but some albums will always sound best with lasers
https://grantland.com/features/the-case-for-cds/

I collect vinyl, too, and I’ve held on to some old cassettes. And of course I have two hard drives full of MP3s and a paid subscription to a music streaming service. But at heart I’m a CD collector. I still own CDs I purchased when I was 14. I haven’t retained anything else from when I was 14, except for my teeth. It’s possible my copy of the Singles soundtrack will outlive my molars.

Not only have I not gotten rid of my old CDs, I also buy new CDs nearly every week. Call it loyalty or lunacy, but the CD remains my preferred music delivery device. It’s more convenient than vinyl and more tangible than digital. I like the sense of continuity it gives my music collection, jumbling up records I bought in 1992 with 2003 and 2011 and yesterday. I like picking out discs for car rides and letting them collect over the course of weeks in the backseat. The rest I like looking at on display in my office — it’s part monument, part money pit, part mirror, part climbing hazard for my 2-year-old son.

Regular listeners of the WTF With Marc Maron podcast know that at some point in each episode — probably during the monologue, but sometimes during the interview — Maron will typically talk about his love of listening to albums on vinyl. If he mentions a particular artist, it will most likely be Creedence Clearwater Revival. (One out of three times it will be “first four albums”–era Black Sabbath.) Now, I would be as annoyed by a middle-aged man pontificating on the purity of hearing music on wax as you probably are if I didn’t happen to agree with Maron. Listening to CCR on vinyl is indeed phenomenal. Can I interest you in Side 1 of Cosmo’s Factory — hey, where are you going?

My point is, just as there are albums that are well suited to vinyl, there are other albums that work best in other formats. If we are talking Young MC’s Stone Cold Rhymin’, Fine Young Cannibals’ The Raw & The Cooked, or Adam Sandler’s They’re All Gonna Laugh At You! — to name three random but scientifically sound examples — I think we can all agree that shelling out $29.99 for a deluxe vinyl to be played on a stupidly expensive turntable just doesn’t seem right. Those records demand to be played on tape, preferably on a boom box that was purchased in the electronics section of a department store that went out of business in 1993. It feels appropriate to hear those albums this way, just as hearing “Lodi” with pops and crackles feels appropriate.

As for the CD format, I can’t imagine listening to, say, Green Day’s Dookie any other way. Dookie is to CDs what Creedence is to vinyl. It is a record resting eternally in the collective memories of aging music fans, a lost piece of data tucked inside scarcely used multidisc changers and laundry baskets full of shit leftover from collegiate apartments. The Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head is like that, too. So are Odelay, Siamese Dream, and Exile in Guyville.3 You can’t hear those records without anticipating the parts where the disc is scratched to hell and won’t stop skipping.

Take Lateralus, the third album by prog-metal band Tool. Lateralus clocks in at 78 minutes and 58 seconds. It is the longest single-disc CD that I own. It is two minutes and 11 seconds longer than Wilco’s Being There, which is packaged on two CDs. But Being There is consciously presented as a CD that wants to be a vinyl record, while Lateralus is a CD that was made to be a CD. Being There forces you to change discs in the middle of the record, while Lateralus just keeps going and going with machinelike steadiness. Being There tries to warm the digital chill of CDs, while Lateralus climbs into a very deep freeze.5

You can stream Lateralus if you want. (Not on paid services, as the band doesn’t allow it; YouTube, however, offers numerous streams presumably posted by fans.) But you’ll never finish it that way. It is physically impossible to play an album that is 78 minutes and 58 seconds long when you also have access to a billion other songs. At some point — perhaps after enjoying Danny Carey’s kinetic drum fills on “Ticks & Leeches,” though likely long before that — your trigger finger will get itchy. Lateralus must be played on a CD player located on the opposite side of the room from where you are seated, presumably after you have been immobilized by an oversize turkey sandwich or horse tranquilizers. Only then can the greatness of this record be revealed.