STUFF IS DOPE ENOUGH
Road trips, both personal and work-related, from small prairie towns to big cities, invariably include a vinyl patrol. Saskatoon is well-served by the Vinyl Diner and Vinyl Exchange, and the haunting of record stores, thrift shops, yard sales is part of the routine.
Sometimes I’m driving, see a spot that’s yielded up treasures in the past, resolve to keep going, and marvel as my car steers itself into the parking lot and my legs walk through the doors.
There’s an allure to the stuff — to the realization that drum beats, guitar plucks and throaty vocals live in these silent grooves, ready for extraction.
I’ve seen both greed and camaraderie when vinyl enthusiasts gather over a fresh batch of used records. It’s a solitary pursuit, tempered by the sneaking suspicion that the fellow flipping through records next to you will find something fantastic nestled in the stacks.
But it’s also genial — record collectors are good people, for the most part — and there’s some fantastically helpful folks out there. I’ve also seen a fellow or two get a little crazy in a bad way, because it takes all kinds to make a hobby.
And then, at some point, we take our finds home.
There’s no right way or wrong way, but this is my way: Processing follows purchase. My path to quality sound is to douse the record in cleaning solution, then suction it all up with a record-cleaning machine, then rinse with distilled water, then suction again, then flip and repeat, then slide it into a brand-new inner sleeve, which is inserted into the cardboard, which is placed on the shelf. Then it’s logged twice: once on a homebrewed sheet, and again on the music database Discogs.
Those who know my cluttered ways are surprised to hear about this insistence on form and function, but compulsion’s a strange and topsy-turvy thing.
I don’t like snaps, crackles, pops erupting from the speakers. So I minimize that.
There’s a ritual to searching, too — fingers trained to flip, flip, flip. Those of us who do it often need just a split second to see a record, and either ignore it or pull it aside for closer inspection.
Most records are pretty much worthless, of course.
They’re too scratched, too damaged or the content on them just isn’t desirable. There’s a lot of junk out there in the wild. Record collectors joke about the stuff that clogs up used bins and never seems to leave; ratty, chewedup 1970s country, easy-listening shlock, anonymous studio bands re-creating existing hits.
I’ve sifted half a million duds, give or take a few thousand, since the bug first bit. The vast majority are rejected with a flick of the wrist.
Records that pass muster — and to do that, they must intrigue me in some way, while showing minimal wear — are amassed in a variety of ways, including lucky happenstance.
Family friends in Kamloops, who had no more use for their pristine collection, drove through Saskatchewan on a holiday, and dropped off several boxes. An area radio station planned to throw out its records during a renovation, but gave me permission to go in and salvage what I could before the dumpster arrived. It was a great night.
The system used to play my records was built in the 1970s. Speakers, turntable, receiver, constructed separately, then joined together decades later. They built those things to last, as they say, and I’m proud they’re still fulfilling their purpose.
Proud, I say hopefully, chased by periodic regret. Moments of frustrated clarity make the entire pursuit seem so foolish and silly. Oh, the hours dumped into this little project. The fruitless, empty chases. The sheer weight and volume of these cardboard/vinyl concoctions.
Record collector Michel Faber wrote in The Guardian a while back that this compulsion is, in effect, futile: That we’ll never harvest everything we want, and that these shelves of music are weak shrines, indeed.
“I will collect stuff nobody else cares about, then grow old and die, having only scratched the surface,” he wrote cheerily.
But then …
When the disc is flat, and the surface pristine, and the mastering excellent, and the seat comfortable, and the liner notes compelling, and the cover clever, you just love everything about it.
You love the collection, the hours and days poured into it. The spinning record is mesmerizing, and the loaded shelves off to the side promise so much more — 40 cubbyholes, crammed with sound.
So I pull out a record by Kentucky coal miner Roscoe Holcomb. His cracked voice, sounding like rust, if rust could sing, fills the room.
Holcomb is dead now. He was asthmatic, stricken with emphysema, and they say he died alone in a nursing home in 1981.
But I have his voice and his banjo plucks, and can reformulate his sound waves at will. His heart beats, his voice winds high and lonesome, and Holcomb is alive in my ears.
Records — so nonsensical in so many ways, such a time-sucker, such a frustrating, maddening, compulsive pursuit — make sense when the arm swings into place, and Roscoe Holcomb emerges from the lead-in groove, and sings:
“I’m going back to the Swanno Mountain
Lordy that’s my home baby, that’s my home.
Got 16 brackets on my banjo Lord it rings like silver, baby, shines like gold.”
And I’m sucked into this ridiculous pursuit, all over again.
It’s a solitary pursuit .... But it’s also genial — record collectors are good people, for the most part — and there’s some fantastically helpful folks out there.