A Borrowed Nostalgia

This is a piece I wrote that was featured on the Oregonian's website and NPR's 'This I Believe.'


I’m looking at a milk crate full of vinyl records. There are probably about 30 LPs in this worn, baby blue crate. While many of these records are over 40 years old, they are my newest musical purchases, most having been acquired in the past few months.

I worked at Music Millennium Northwest until it went out of business two years ago. It had been around since 1969. It survived transitions from records to 8-tracks to tapes to CD's, but it finally met its match with the MP3.



When the record store closed, I purchased my first computer. Since then, I have downloaded 10,472 songs. I've been exposed to more music in the past couple years than the prior ten combined. I've listened to punk, folk, electronic, you name it, songs by hundreds upon hundreds of artists. I've broadened my musical horizons further than I ever knew they could be stretched.

Yet, despite all I've gained I feel a deeper sense of loss. When I was a kid, on those cherished days that, after hours of skimming the bins in the local record store, I returned home with a new disc in my hand, I’d listen to it over and over again, read the liner notes repeatedly, stare at the pictures for hours, memorize the lyrics and analyze each line. I fully consumed everything I got. These days I find myself with an iPod always set to shuffle, and a finger permanently resting on the skip-to-the-next-track button.

I think it’s time to slow down again.

I believe in the vinyl record. CD’s may go the way of 8-tracks, but vinyl has survived through all the passing trends, and I believe it will continue to do so. Our generation cannot pass by without footprints of its existence, and mp3’s, blogs, and .jpg’s are too expendable. The nostalgia of bringing the needle to the record cannot be replaced with any sort of “fond” memory of clicking ‘download’ on a computer screen.

Some doubt our next generation of children would have any interest in something like records-things that have never been part of their lives, but that battered blue crate in my bedroom is new to me too. I was the CD generation, yet I have borrowed nostalgia for that which I never experienced in the first place.

When I see a record, I see people interacting in a store instead of sitting in isolation in front of a computer screen. When I see a record, I see a passionate collector showing his friends his newest find: an original, not re-release, copy of Louder Than Bombs. When I see a record, I see a DJ scratching vinyl with a skill level few could match, and none can replicate with a laptop. When I see a record, I see an album that tells a story, complete with transitions, and more encompassing than solely hit singles.

Ipod’s and mp3’s may be here to stay, but I believe records will always hold a place in society. We will tire of a world that moves too fast, where one song hardly finishes before we skip to the next. That is when we will pull out our little blue crates and reacquaint ourselves with their contents.

If asked to choose between a greater accessibility to more music, or a limited supply to a handful of good records, almost anyone would undoubtedly choose the first option. Yet, if I asked the same people the question of ‘is it better to have a thousand acquaintances and no close friends, or just a handful of close friends,’ what then would they answer?