My words but a whisper, your deafness, a shout.
Whilst perfectly aware that extolling the virtues of vinyl Vs the already won war against digital, is both futile and liable to claims of being a retro-obsessed old duffer…I’m gonna give it a go anyway. But not on the usual claims of audiophile quality and 22Khz response Vs 44Khz, but rather the sheer joy of owning something physical, glorious and a work of art visually and perhaps musically. Somewhere, hidden away in a loft in Cheshire is a treasure trove of old vinyl collected for it’s visual and wow impact. And I just remembered one now : Thick as a Brick, by Jethro Tull. Prog rock in all it’s pomp and cod-piece glory. But wait! The album, a replica of a ten page broadsheet newspaper, complete with crossword is sublime. Here’s a taste:
It’s all about the joy of ownership. The need to collect. And which a hard disk full of 10,000 songs just doesn’t seem to satisfy. Also, human beings attach emotion to physical objects that in turn they associate with the important experiences of life, love, despair…and death. I’m not sure if that can be done with thickasabrick.mp3, but when handling and smelling that old LP and the faded paper sleeve, it all comes flooding back. The smell of burning magnesium ribbon, the subtle tang of sulphur and Miss Walker in her lab coat…:-) You see, a download just isn’t quite the same 🙂
80:8 Moving | Still | Blog 