"Hold tomatoes at ready"So I was talking to a blogger friend of mine on the IM the other day (he does a blog with another blogger friend of mine. It's very funny. Their posts are not long. This is their blog. (It's in Portuguese, by the way)), when he tells me that he was thinking about buying a stereo with a turntable. Obviously, my reaction was something along the lines of the usual “good for you *smiling face *” answer formula, but, the more I think of it, the more I realize that that is not such an awesome idea.
Vinyl has the advantage of providing sound quality that can't be achieved with digital formats, but, to actually notice any difference, you'd need a top-notch sound system, which is relatively easily attainable through the process of coughing up the dough. Lots of dough. So, it's easy to immediately realize that this option is only viable for true music lovers, in theory...
For the continuation of this post, let's assume that you got that sound system from a music lover's wet dreams. You have a state-of-the-art stereo, with a simply godly turntable and you have placed the full-range, top-quality monitors in the room in such a manner that will provide the most perfect experience possible. Yet, you still haven't actually experienced anything. You need to get some records.
You head to the record store (let's assume that it is a large one) and quickly find the section dedicated to vinyl records. Even more quickly, the thought “That's it?!” races to mind. You glare at the sadistically placed neighboring aisle of Jazz/Folk CDs starting with X, Y or Z, and then you look down at the 13 records in “A – All Genres”, where only 6 records actually are by artists whose name starts with A, and one of said records is AC/DC's Fly On The Wall.
That and the industrial coating of dust on top of the whole section makes you quickly realize that no one ever actually cares about this part of the store, and the staff is pissing on you. Nevertheless, you keep your hopes up. After all, it's called a record store, not a CD store. After some time, you start to actually “think” like the store, “get into its mind”, so to speak. That means that you begin to understand that if you're looking for Rubber Soul by The Beatles, you'll find it in “B – All Genres”, if it is Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys that you want, it'll be somewhere in the vicinity of “F – All Genres”, if you're looking for Feedbacker by Boris, you might as well give up now, and if you're still looking for No Line On The Horizon by U2, you're probably blind, since it's harder to discover a place where you can't find it (“U – All Genres” being one of them).
Eventually, your search is fruitful, and, after having paid the price for records, with all its extra BFYTW (“Because fuck you, that's why”) fees, you leave the store and come back home, having bought two or more of the following albums:
The Velvet Underground & Nico, by The Velvet Underground;
Fragile, by Yes;
The White Album and/or Abbey Road, by The Beatles;
The Dark Side Of The Moon, by Pink Floyd;
Are You Experienced, by The Jimi Hendrix Experience;
In The Court Of The Crimson King, by King Crimson;
OK Computer, by Radiohead.
Well, you've got everything you need now. Right? Right?! Actually, no. For the simple reason that you are a music lover, and, therefore, know all of the above albums by heart, unless you aren't in fact a music lover... You see, records such as those you only actually own for status, so that people respect you as a fan of music, so that people can look at your collection and say “Hey! You have Fragile by Yes... Nice... That's a very... um... very... Hey! Is that Left 4 Dead 2?”. No one really expects you to actually LIKE the albums, or even so much as LISTEN to them. You know perfectly well that you actually wanted Feedbacker by Boris from the very start, but you also know that buying it would have been really expensive. See where I'm getting at here? Pretty much all the non-mainstream bands you listen to make very limited amounts of vinyls, which are very hard to find, and that is considering that you're lucky enough that they make any at all. You have been owned.
There are mainly only four genres for which you would ever want to get a turntable sound system, and those are Classical, Post-Rock, Psychedelic and Drone/Doom. In other words, it either can be used as a way for people to show off their superiority in comparison to the rest of the human race (Classical and Post-Rock), because of course you COULD listen to Godspeed You! Black Emperor on CD, but every single Hertz that needle manages to catch that the laser can't is perceived as an extra millimeter on the owner's dick (at least, by said owner). Or it can be used as way to have more awesome trips (Psychedelic and Drone/Doom), because... fuck... it's awesome, need I another reason?
Sadly, music lovers don't like to be associated with the stoner group of vinylheads, and records stores feel uneasy about endorsing the group, which leaves us with the showoffs.
Conclusion: the sound system with a turntable is virtually useless, unless the only way you can prove yourself to be better than your friends is by your sound equipment.
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