Hi friend, I feel truly blessed to have been bitten by the music bug so young! My father has collected albums, Vinyl albums, his whole life. By the time I was 6 or 7 he had amassed a huge collection of Classical and Jazz records which he would play constantly, thus giving me a huge appreciation for melody, harmony and incredible musicianship! For Christmas 1975, he bought me my first Rock Album, an album he considered to be of equal standing to his vast collection of Classical and Jazz music, he wasn’t wrong, the album was Queen’s ‘A Night At The Opera’. This masterful work changed my life, even though I was so young, it immediately struck a chord so deep within me, that to this day ‘A Night At The Opera’ is still my favourite album!
So what is the allure of Vinyl? For me it’s two fold, firstly, there is this huge nostalgia that takes me back to those times when discovering a new artist or song was a hugely exciting experience! In the days before the internet (remember those days? haha) I would hear a song on the radio or I would read about a band in a magazine that intrigued me so much that I would rush out and buy their album, get it home and listen to the first side for a week before eventually turning it over to the second side! Then the next part of the Vinyl experience for me is physically holding the album, looking at the photos, the artwork, reading the credits, wondering where these far off places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Memphis were and reading the lyrics. This is an infinitely more satisfying, tactile experience than downloading or streaming a song and not being able to easily get any of this information that adds to the overall understanding of the artist’s vision of the music! For instance, Storm Thorgerson’s Artwork is a huge contributing factor to that whole voyage of discovery we all have when listening to Pink Floyd’s masterpiece ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’.
But let’s be clear, digital sounds great. Can it sound bad? Of course done badly it can, but so can analog! For instance, I’m listening to ‘Selling England By The Pound’ at the moment and I’m hearing details in the master that I never heard before!
This week we released two videos, the first one was with Pete Lyman. Pete is both a world class mastering engineer and a co-owner of Infrasonic Sound and not only does he do amazing work he also owns a lathe and cuts records! Pete showed me the lathe and told us about the process of cutting Vinyl. Then we released a Video we filmed at Rainbo Records. Rainbo is a Vinyl Manufacturing plant that opened it’s doors in 1939 and has been in business ever since. They have ridden the wave of popularity of Vinyl and managed to keep their doors open where many others have shut down. Steve Sheldon who runs the Plant very kindly showed us around, it was a really unique experience and one I will treasure forever!
People will argue the merits of any medium music is presented on, whether it’s a CD, mp3, streaming, cassette or Vinyl, they all have their place somewhere. All I can say is I love that Vinyl still has it’s place, because in my heart it will always be a huge part of why I work in the music industry.
Please check out the latest two videos with Pete Lyman’s studio and Steve Sheldon showing us around Rainbo Records. Please like, comment and share, I would really appreciate it!
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpHhflCFa-M[/fve]
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4nltdIWNK4[/fve]
Many thanks
Warren