Vinyl records are back in the news again at the moment, and it does my heart good to see several shops in Shrewsbury selling these magical, beautiful discs of black shiny plastic.
Many pop music enthusiasts (myself among them) had suspicions when compact discs came on the scene that, despite all the hype, CDs somehow didn’t sound as “good” as vinyl records.
It was hard to explain, but the suspicion was there, and it wouldn’t go away.
We believed (and still believe) that vinyl offered a warmer, richer, deeper, more human sound.
On compact disc, The Merseybeats lacked their beat, the Rolling Stones didn’t roll quite so sweetly.
Not only this, but it is very hard to fall in love with the physical object that is a CD. It’s cold and clinical like something that might be used in a dental surgery. The case it comes in is similarly cheap and disposable.
It was hard to escape (especially in the early days of CDs) the notion that the music industry was ripping us off by mass producing these unlovable objects and then selling them at a ridiculously inflated price.
On top of all this, you no longer had the exhaustive sleeve notes, the 12-inch by 12-inch cover picture to admire, and that general feeling that you’d just purchased something worthwhile.
Of course, here we now are in 2015 and even CDs are perceived as yesterday’s technology, ‘old hat’ - superseded by digital downloads that take just seconds to acquire.
So let us perform a little dance in the streets
to welcome back good old vinyl.
We hear that sales of vinyl records have increased by a whopping, speaker-vibrating 49 per cent over the last year.
We don’t need reminding of course that vinyl was once written off with the advent of first cassettes, then CDs, then MP3 files.
But the return of the black stuff can now be seen everywhere.
In Shrewsbury Market Hall we have the amazing White Rabbit store crammed with thousands of records, and you’ll also find vinyl at Cave Records in The Parade Shopping Centre in St Mary’s Place.
The latter is run by Shrewsbury musician Joseph Cave and his wife, Becki, also a musician.
They were celebrating Record Store Day at the weekend, an international event to place record shops firmly in the spotlight. The idea behind Record Store Day first materialised in 2007 when 700 stores in America came together to mark their culture and celebrate records.
Shrewsbury’s Cave Records specialises in selling albums by artists such as Bjork, Black Sabbath, Aphex Twin, John Coltrane, the Beastie Boys, Radiohead, the Velvet Underground and many others.
Meanwhile, newly-opened sound systems retailer Acoustic Boutique in The Square has now introduced record players into the shop to capitalise on the fresh demand.
Says David Whittaker, of Acoustic Boutique: “Younger people, especially indie-rock fans, are now buying records, and older people are rediscovering their love of vinyl.
“With the perceived quality of vinyl and the hands-on approach of putting the needle to the record, people are enjoying their music the old-fashioned - yet new-fashioned way.”
All this talk of vinyl has got me reaching for my records, perhaps not Bjork and the Beastie Boys, but then I’m probably one of those 'older people' to whom that young Mr Whittaker was referring!
Phil Gillam’s gentle novel of family life, Shrewsbury Station Just After Six, is available from Pengwern Books, Fish Street, Shrewsbury, and from Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.
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