My name is Barbara and I’ve been a vinyl-abuser. In youth, I did unspeakable, shameful things to records. I’d leave them out of their covers. I’d abandon them on the floor and walk on them; sometimes dance on them. I’d balance wine glasses, ashtrays and nail varnish pots on them. If a track started jumping, I’d stick a penny (or three) on the stylus. When records were trashed, I’d buy them again.
Which is how I emerged from years of music journalism with several wrecked copies of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Darklands and a scratched, filthy record collection worth about 20 pence. While fellow music hacks sit pretty on vinyl goldmines, what remains of my collection will one day have to be disposed of by toxic waste experts wearing biohazard suits. What an idiot. Then again, as the lady sang, je ne regrette rien. My vinyl may be worthless, but the feelings and memories are priceless.
I was reminded of my vinyl-atrocities by the run-up to yesterday’s 15th annual Record Store Day, a global event to support and celebrate independent record stores, where artists release special editions you can only buy from record shops. This year, Taylor Swift is the special ambassador and there are hundreds of special releases featuring artists from U2 to Cypress Hill, Blur to Stevie Nicks.
While some have issues with Record Store Day, such as major labels hijacking it, it’s generally perceived as a great thing: keeping a crucial branch of the music ecosystem alive. Amen to that. However, there’s an elitist side to vinyl culture, a nerd shadow-world encapsulated in various online tips for Record Store Day: Be prepared… Arrive early… Meet other vinyl enthusiasts… Plan ahead for weather. Oh Christ, you think, Record Store Day may be many wonderful things, but it’s also a mass global gathering of Vinyl Bores.
It’s a recurring issue: should a musical format matter that much – more than the actual music? How do Vinyl Heads become Vinyl Bores? First things first: you’ve got to applaud the tenacity: the hand-wringing down the years about every format change, from CDs to streaming, including some you’ll have forgotten. Mini-discs, anyone? Please note that Vinyl Bores are a species distinct from Vinyl Heads, most of whom are just as likely to fashion a Spotify list as they are to rhapsodise about rare albums. There are even people able to talk about historical studio techniques/listening modes and the myriad sounds/atmospheres/nuances they produce, without making you want to claw your own ears off and feed them to a dog.
Vinyl Bores/Snobs are a self-regarding breed apart: they tolerate no other formats and regard other listening modes as cultural philistinism. You may have met one or two of them. They treat their records like priceless exhibits at Sotheby’s. They store them in plastic sleeves and clean them with little dusters. They balance them between their palms. They lower them on to turntables as if performing a sacred ritual. There may be an anxious inspection of the stylus – has a minuscule speck of dust managed to attach itself?
When music is (finally) permitted, it’s hard to hear it over the inevitable highly technical tutorial about superior sound quality that feels as long as Bob Dylan’s career.
What life-sapping madness is this? When I was a music journalist, I had about as much interest in the mechanics of formats as I did in how a kettle worked. It was the music that mattered and it could have arrived in a cereal packet for all I cared. Fetishising vinyl struck me as fuddy-duddy and weirdly sex-specific: something mainly blokes did. I thought music should be visceral, not collectible, hence the vinyl-abuse (my excuse anyway). Still today, I wonder: why is it that some people allow a format – how music is conveyed – to overwhelm the love of music itself?
Since music was rendered anti-physical, I understand the vinyl argument more. Not only does Spotify have ignoble form for treating artists shabbily, it sometimes feels like a huge, soulless, aural discount supermarket. I mourn the loss of cover art and the dying concept of “the album” in an era where tracks are scattered to the winds.
And sometimes it’s good to be reminded that listening to music can be an activity, not just “background noise”. I can see how vinyl could feel like a grassroots rebellion against commercialism: socking it to The Man, creating a cottage industry of sound Spotify can’t get its mitts on.
That said, isn’t vinyl itself an established, highly lucrative wing of the industry? A couple of years ago, it outsold CDs. Negatively speaking, the heightened emphasis on heritage acts can represent cultural stagnation. Then there’s consumer expense: decent kit alone – turntables and speakers – is far from cheap. Nor is vinyl portable or always accessible; storing records must be difficult for skint renters.
Worse, there’s the abiding sense of snobbery, elitism, a posture of authenticity that too often feels like crowing. Do Vinyl Snobs think they’re superior to other music fans? I think a fair few of them do. There’s that sense of: “We might both enjoy music, we may even like the same artists, but do you listen to them ‘correctly’?.” What emerges is a fetish for format that drags everything back to the dreary, dated concept of “good” and “bad” taste, when one of the most powerful aspects of music is that it’s democratic: everyone’s vote is equal.
In a way, where’s the fire? For some people, on Record Store Day – and every other day – the human soul is round, made of black plastic and has a little hole in the middle. Which is great. It just doesn’t make you better than me.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
