By the time I was a teenager (that would be 1988), I had a fairly nice record collection. Mostly, it was Duran Duran 12″ singles, but compared to the number of tapes and the handful of CDs I had, records were the clear winner – still are. Everything I had in my collection when I was 12 is still in my collection now.

Cassettes never did it for me. Being portable and convenient were their only selling points. The sound quality was bad and the artwork was basically nonexistent. They were good for making mixes though.

I really liked CDs and was an early adopter, but still, nothing beat vinyl. As I got older and into the punk scene, records were still the medium of choice. We couldn’t burn our own CDs yet (that took off in 1997ish) and cassettes were for demos, so if you wanted to “make it” in the punk scene, you had to put out your release on vinyl. Even through the growth of CDs and CD-Rs, vinyl remained central in the scene and central in my heart.

When MP3s became the medium of choice, I was right there with it. I had Napster and downloaded tons of music. I still have 200+ Gigabites of music on MP3. But over the past 25 years (it was 25 years ago when I bought my first record – Duran Duran’s Wild Boys 12″ single) my record collection has grown and grown.

I probably have close to 900 records. Maybe 1000. Sure, many were bought in dollar bins and most aren’t in mint condition, but that’s of little matter to me. I’m not a collector, I just like music.

“The problem with people who are collectors and purists and stuff like that is, their regard is not for the music, it is for some imaginary intrinsic value of vinyl and cardboard. People who demand to have the original release of this, that, and the other thing in the original wrapper and all that stuff, that’s fetishism.” – Frank Zappa

My love for records is not just the music, but it’s also the medium. On a record, you can see how the music changes by how the grooves in the vinyl change. You can tell the music is there. Cassettes look the same whether full of sound or blank. CDs have some evidence, but mostly it’s just a chunk of shiny plastic.

And as for MP3s, you can’t even tell that they’re there at all. In fact, it’s come to the point where if I only have something as an MP3, it’s like I don’t have it at all. It’s not until I have it on vinyl that it really exists for me. MP3s are a great way to preview the music that I’ll eventually track down on vinyl.

MP3s are like cassettes. They only reason they exist is because they’re portable. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but if I’m going to listen to music, it’s more than likely going to be on vinyl. I like the artwork, the liner notes, the labels. I like putting the record on the platter and the needle to the record. I like how records and record stores smell. If you’d ask me what music smells like, the answer would have to be vinyl.

I realize that many people still exclusively use MP3s – that’s why I transfer some of my more rare records to digital and offer them on my site or in mix CDs. It’s not for me – when I want to listen to them, I put on the record – it’s the only way to really share music.

My rediscovery of vinyl has changed music from some background noise I listen to while doing other things to something akin to reading a book or watching a movie – it’s a full experience in and of itself. If you get the chance, pick up a turntable and a few records and give it a shot.

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