What’s On Your Turntable Right Now?

I've been trolling through my old vinyl and ripping a lot of it to mp3 files.  Just did this one:

recently i've been listening to Al dimeola - casino on my turntable.

jazz-rock with spanish influeances. great performance. great album.

I gave my turntable to my dad some years ago so he could listen to his Herb Alpert and Frank Sinatra stuff. My record collection, which was fairly significant mix of progressive, fusion, jazz and rock; got caught in Hurricane Floyd back in the 90's. Every single cover and insert was soaked. I tried to salvage what I could, but gave up. It was too far gone. Boxes, upon boxes, upon boxes, of albums had to be dumped. To this day I still can't find Jimi's War Heroes on CD. I'm sure there are others I never found also. Maybe they just slipped away from my memory as time and interests changed.

All this though, is a long winded way to say that vinyl was cool! I grew up with vinyl. I remember some of my first album purchases at 9 and 10 years old costing $1.99 at Disc-O-Mat Records or Korvettes or Harmony Records. Tony Williams album Believe It was a mind-blower. The album has Tony on the cover holding a pair of very thick drum sticks and the insert was a profile shot of Tony at the Gretsch drums amidst a smoke filled background. Man I stared at that album and insert incessantly. I listened over and over again to that album and never grew tired of it. In later years, when it became fashionable to put out gatefolds - albums that opened up - it was sort of like achieving Nirvana. Especially if it was a live album with concert shots or verbiage of gratitude that extended from family, friends and co-workers, right on to the companies they endorsed.

Anyway, I'm 46 years old now and the cd purchase for me has never been close to the joy I experienced in opening an album and carefully placing that vinyl on the turntable and sitting down to listen. You were somhow transported away. Maybe because of the stationary place the turn table had to be used in. Nowadays with digital music and cd's you can just move through life and the listening experience becomes background to everything else you have going on at the moment. Like maybe driving your car?

 I don't know, but the fact that you needed electricity and you couldn't jolt the turntable, produced a time and space that was somehow wholesome. You actually devoted some time to sitting down with friends and listening. Sometimes we even prepared our minds beforehand to really enhance the listening experience. And sometimes, to albums like Pink Floyd's Animals...it was mandatory!

 Nonetheless, it kept us off the streets and we communicated and grew in our listening tastes, likes and dislikes. So, long story ending...Thank God I was around for vinyl. For those of you that missed it, I feel a bit of sadness for you. But, relax, I'm certain the cd experience means even that much more to you. So maybe, round and round, as it goes, we all get our turn.

Thanks for reading.