It seems that many things from my youth that I thought were long gone are now making a comeback, and I couldn’t be happier.
When I was entering my teen years, my parents gave me a choice for my birthday gift. I could get a bike or a record player. I chose the record player and spent many hours listening to the precious albums that I purchased. Whenever the local cafe was replacing its playlist in the jukebox, we teenagers had the opportunity to purchase the old 45s at discount prices.
That was many years ago and since that time I, (along with everyone else), have run the course of moving from records to eight-track, to cassettes, to CDs and most recently, to downloading music to my iPhone and iPad. Technology always seemed to come up with improvements, or so we were led to believe.
But suddenly vinyl records are big again and back in vogue with more and more people buying turntables or what was more commonly known in our day as portable record players. It has been several decades since entertainment gurus deemed the turntable to be dead in the water and a dinosaur among newer and better technologies. In 1991 The Economist ran a story entitled “End of Track,” but those forecasters were wrong. Since 2006 sales of vinyl have been steadily increasing.
My husband and I are part of this latest trend as we just recently purchased an entertainment system which has a turntable. Although the system also plays cassettes and CD’s, we were most interested in using it to play our old records (which thankfully I did not dispose of in one of my many garage sales). But it’s not just baby boomers who are returning to vinyl, it seems that it is the younger generation, who are truly driving this revival.
So what’s behind this comeback in an age where music can be downloaded instantly and often at little or no cost? Some claim it’s akin to being at a live concert, but James Stables says the return “shows something’s lacking in digital music.” And Tim Ingham, editor of Music Week, maintains that people “demand something packed with tactile reward.” In other words, the look and feel of vinyl provides something that newer technologies cannot.
For me, vinyl bears resemblance to an old-fashioned book. Yes, I can download a book onto my iPad (and I often do so if I am travelling) but nothing can replace the joy and feel of a paperback or hardcover in my hands. And likewise, nothing is as satisfying as slipping that vinyl out of its sleeve, carefully setting down the needle in the groove (now some of the younger set will understand where the term groovy came from) and settling back to let the music wash over me. Vinyl is back and so is a part of my youth!
