My turntable
Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

One of the things that makes me laugh is the slew of arti­cles that have been writ­ten late­ly about the resur­gence of vinyl. I laugh main­ly because I felt that the vinyl resur­gence had come and gone. I asso­ci­at­ed the trend with Mata­dor’s renewed com­mit­ment to reis­su­ing some of their back cat­a­logue on 180 gram vinyl, some­thing they did four or five years ago.

I chew my friend Mark’s ear off all the time when­ev­er I read a new sto­ry declar­ing that the vinyl LP — the vehi­cle that brought rock ’n’ roll into garages, liv­ing rooms, and base­ments across Amer­i­ca — would rise like a Phoenix, car­ry­ing the music indus­try on its back. It’s a love­ly, roman­tic thought to which I say, “Fat chance.”

Me? I’ve been see-saw­ing back and forth between lov­ing the medi­um and lov­ing it but hav­ing no room for the cum­ber­some equip­ment that can dom­i­nate any Philadel­phia apart­ment or rowhome eas­i­ly if you’re not careful.

I had­n’t been very care­ful myself. Var­i­ous incar­na­tions of my stereo have been in my life since I was a grad stu­dent in New York City. It was a fix­ture in my room and I don’t know what I would’ve done if I could­n’t blast Spoon or the Ramones or the New Pornog­ra­phers through my head­phones dur­ing the last reces­sion. It was a godsend.

Fast-for­ward a few years and I found myself jock­ey­ing for space. It was no longer accept­able to sim­ply have the com­po­nents some­where on the floor so I could hud­dle next to it with my over­sized head­phones. I bought nice speak­ers from the good peo­ple at Axiom Audio and was all set.

Except I wasn’t.

Every­thing was too big. Like I said above, unless the stars align, it’s real­ly hard to find a place to put a stereo, espe­cial­ly when you live in places that have been gut-rehabbed. There are no cor­ners where one can safe­ly tuck away a com­po­nent stereo sys­tem. Accord­ing­ly, the stereo went from being a vital part of my life to being packed up and stowed in the guest room before it spent a few weeks in the basement.

It was replaced by a tiny iPod-enabled speak­er with AM/FM radio. I was reject­ing music in phys­i­cal for­mats like so many oth­er con­sumers. I also noticed that I lis­tened to music in pro­por­tion to the equip­ment I had to play it. There have been long stretch­es where music is some­thing I do for work, and then leave alone when I’m at home.

That is, until today. Helen and I picked up a neat new sofa — IKEA, natch — and a new nook was born! The side table that was once clut­tered with books and mail sud­den­ly looked like a great stereo stand.

My stereo has a new lease on life and I could­n’t be hap­pi­er. I’m doing things I haven’t done in years, name­ly going to record stores and trolling eBay for deals on LPs. I feel like a new man!