In today’s society we are seeing more and more throwbacks to “the ways of old”. People seem to constantly be going out of their way to do things in which most would consider inefficient and outdated. Whether that’s purchasing an old muscle car from the 60s that may just get 10 miles per gallon or the very topic of this analysis, the newly rekindled love for the old way of listening to music.
With the resurgence of vinyl records, as with a market to anything older than a decade, comes the social stereotype of the “hipster”. The common perception of this breed of individual is that of a pompous elitist standing outside a Starbucks with a five dollar specialty brew while they flick the butt of their clove cigarette in to the gutter. While they may claim to understand the inner workings of this world, their actions in saving it become incredibly selective. However, their most defining trait is a usually false passion for the old ways of doing things that they won’t hesitate to tell you are so much better than the modern world’s way of doing the same things. In fact, the Oxford- English Dictionary states the first usage of the word all the way back in the 40s as “a know it all”. The attachment of records to the hipster persona brands them with the unfair stigma of being just as fleeting as any passing fad. But what gain would an individual receive to the image of how others perceive them by collecting something that is nearly impossible to keep on his or her person? Or more importantly, what is it that drives someone to cling to the old ways of doing things in the first place?
Jack White, front man and one half of The White Stripes, believes that we aren’t so much clinging to records as we are simply trying to preserve them. Back in 2001, while seeking a location where he could store his equipment and practice, he stumbled upon a building that today has transformed in to Third Man Records. Standing not only as a record store and venue, White has actually created an environment where live performances can be pressed to vinyl as they are performed on stage. It is his belief that music should be heard as it is recorded and by eliminating all aspects of editing and tweaking that exist today, that can be achieved as it once was on vinyl records. This belief, sadly not held by many musicians of our generation, represents an era in which the responsibility of technology was well understood and not abused as it is in modern times.
While your stance on the kind of person who purchases records and your opinions on why they are still being pressed are likely to vary greatly from the person sitting next to you, there is something to say about the fact that they simply still exist. It isn’t as easy as claiming it’s more cost effective to purchase the digital download of an album as opposed to the record, the same way it isn’t so simple explaining why you may write your grandmother a letter instead of an e-mail or why you sit down to play a board game with your family instead of loading the same game with an app on your phone. In a world that is hungry for more and more technology we are losing what it once felt like to actually possess an item. When every book, movie, and song you own is floating in a “cloud” somewhere waiting to make sure you have permission to view it, sometimes it’s just nice to touch a needle to vinyl.
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