2. analog
  3. 168613-129831

What is it about spinning vinyl?

I just turned the system off several minutes ago. I had been listening to a great, high res file of Tower of Power, best horn section ever. As many know I have been sans turntable for 8 months. I sold my old one and ordered a new one but you know the story. Covid delays. It is under construction now.  Anyway, as I turned the system off I got this real urge to play a record. The wizard inside did not feel like turning the computer back on. It wanted a record. Grumpy, I decided to hit the sack. 
Think about that. I have a terabyte and a half of digital files sitting there in a hard drive.  Everything from Bach to Captain Beefheart. It had to be a record. No record, bedtime. It was not about the music. It was about the mechanical act of playing a record. I've been doing it since I was four years old. My dad got me a Zenith portable for my fourth birthday. You know, with the black cobra tonearm complete with eyes! Is it just repetitive behavior. Perhaps there is some sort of psychological explanation. Happy associations? Platter hypnosis? Maybe it is that we get emotionally attached to certain behaviors. 
mijostyn
tablejockey
4,006 posts
 
The LP ritual is one of the few things lin ife that ISN'T cancerous, offensive to someone else and lowers my blood pressure without undesirable side effects.

I left a stack albums on the corner of my block last night for someone else to enjoy. My double/triple copies that didn't make my STAMPER cut.

Hopefully someone will actually enjoy them, but likely a homeless person picked them up and will try to cash them in at my neighborhood store.
They will be sadly disappointed when they are told 50 cents each!
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,097 posts
 
I got this real urge to play a record. The wizard inside did not feel like turning the computer back on. It wanted a record. Grumpy, I decided to hit the sack.
Think about that. I have a terabyte and a half of digital files sitting there in a hard drive. Everything from Bach to Captain Beefheart. It had to be a record. No record, bedtime. It was not about the music.
You have just explained how digital converts music to a commodity, while playing an LP has you present to the music.
edgewear
543 posts
 
@mijostyn,
Zappa may well have suspected that the idea of linear progression is an illusion as well as a mentality that has wreaked havoc on the planet. But what do I know?

Ben Watson, the British scholar who wrote 'The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play' about Zappa's music, proposes that 'boring' might also be interpreted as 'piercing', 'probing' or 'drilling'. Perhaps too far fetched, but it certainly puts another 'spin' on it. It's a vicious circle, you got it?

reubent
7,077 posts
 
@whart  - I own Patto - "Patto" on Vertigo Swirl. I love it! And it's fun to watch it spin around.....
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn OP
8,570 posts
 
edgewear, a mutant industrial vacuum cleaner dances about a mysterious night time camp fire. Festoons. Dozens of imported castanets, clutched by the horrible suction of it's heavy duty hose, waving with marginal erotic abandon in the midnight autumn air. This linear progression wreaked havoc on the drug laden minds of flower power adolescents.

Weasels Rip my Flesh, Neon Park, Sailing Shoes, Lowell George, Hot Rats. Circular. 
More to discover