I’ve had a love affair with music for most of my life. It’s meant spend­ing mon­ey I did­n’t have just to get a par­tic­u­lar album, lest it sell out and not be restocked. It meant run­ning to Repo Records from Haver­ford Col­lege in the mid­dle of my high school track meets. It meant secret trips to Young Ones in Kutz­town when I was sup­posed to be head­ed to the pool to life­guard. Lat­er, it meant lunch break pil­grim­ages to Space­boy Music when I worked at TLA Video. It meant spend­ing hours at AKA Music just soak­ing in new and unfa­mil­iar sounds.

The affair end­ed unex­pect­ed­ly. I’d been going to record stores since I was a teenag­er, whether it was the afore­men­tioned Young Ones, or just ask­ing the hap­less clerk at Sam Goody in the Coven­try Mall in Pottstown if they had any Fugazi. I pestered the guys at Space­boy as they migrat­ed west on South St. right up until the store closed. I mourned the loss of Repo Records on Lan­cast­er Avenue even after it had been com­plete­ly picked over and left for dead long before they shut the doors for good. I still cared about the alleged­ly obso­lete rit­u­al that we nos­tal­gics will strug­gle to explain to our chil­dren; “Once upon a time, we went to record stores, argued with clerks, and bought music, face to face.”

Then one day I just stopped going. I tried to tell myself it was a pass­ing thing and that I would find myself brows­ing the racks at AKA again soon enough, but a few months quick­ly became two years. I’d walk by the store some­times and remem­ber that I helped them move twice as they drift­ed up 2nd St. to their present location.

Now I’ve fall­en in love all over again, head over heels. I wan­dered back into AKA on Record Store Day and picked up Pave­men­t’s Live in Koln LP, along with two Son­ic Youth split 7″. I’ve been hunt­ing down R.E.M. on vinyl, too. It’s felt great to get back into the swing of things and to real­ly enjoy the lush sounds of heavy vinyl warm­ing up the house. The whole expe­ri­ence is so much more sat­is­fy­ing for me, speak­ing as some­one who found that I lis­tened to music less at home since the advent of the iPod.

I’m hap­py to be back in the habit of look­ing for old and new favorites on LP. I’ve resolved to buy any album I rec­om­mend over the course of the year, and I’ve been doing due dili­gence to pick up those I con­sid­ered favorites dur­ing the past two years. In short, I’ve been giv­ing Insound and eBay an awful lot of busi­ness late­ly, which puts a smile on my face.