Day 7/8

Yeah, I got more "/" than Kordell. That, and I'm a lazy poster.

What's one buzzword you hear at work that you're so over?


"Winning." With a close second being the troll/warlock distinction.

What is one sign of the apocalypse you've seen lately? When you see things like this, do you laugh, cry - or both?

I love vinyl records; specifically, listening to them on a dedicated turntable with a decent system (speakers and amplifier). I get a lot of crap for this interest of mine, but that's fine. Let the h8ers h8, as my grandmother always says. Part (most?) of the problem comes in the form of mass-produced (read: cheap) equipment that has undoubtedly made up most of my friends' listening experiences thus far. Hearing a scratched, dusty record on a cheap player, through cheap speakers and a boombox is not the ideal way to listen to records. Kind of like how Red Lobster, cheddar biscuits notwithstanding, is not the best place to form your final judgement on seafood. 

So it kills me to see that Best Buy and other retail outlets are selling these cheap USB turntables that plug directly into your computer. Two things are especially irksome:

1. I have nothing against portable music -- I'm a pretty voracious consumer of music blogs and my itunes library dwarfs my record collection (about 750 to 450). However, I own only a few duplicates of albums in portable and vinyl form. For me, my records and my mp3 collection represent mostly non-intersecting bubbles in my Venn diagram of music. The intersecting albums are usually newer ones that I like a lot -- enough to get the physical copy (recently, Joanna Newsom and Destroyer made this esteemed list). My theory is that some music is best listened to in one format or the other (new stuff on mp3, old stuff on vinyl, generally). But even if you would like to have one of your records on your computer, USB turntables are NOT a good way to make your records portable. Here's why:

2. USB turntables are really shitty, with maybe one possible exception. If you have a pile of records sitting in your basement and you want to enjoy them, go onto ebay and find a nice, vintage Denon direct drive turntable, refit it with a quality cartridge, and hook it up to your receiver or amplifer. It's more legwork, but I guarantee that it'll be well worth it (and only a little more expensive). Doing it the "hard way" might also change your views towards vinyl. They won't be simply an antiquated piece of technology that's currently holding your favorite music captive. Record players will be a gateway into the magical world that is vinyl. 

So the sign of the apocalypse is that the idea of making ridiculous things like USB record players available for cheap purchase, under the misguided rationale of, "Hey, records are cool -- young people love them! But they also have short attention spans and love computers. Hey, we sell computers, too! Let's sell record players that plug directly into your computer!"is crazy. It subverts the whole reason records are so enchanting and actually probably turns people off the medium, thus reinforcing the popular notion that records are popular simply because hipsters like (well, hipsters never "like" anything; maybe "permit the existence of" is a more accurate term) them. No, records are popular because they sound amazing.

Anyone interested in possibly acquiring a full set (record player, receiver, possibly speakers) should let me know... I really have no need for two systems in my tiny apartment.