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Katherine Cording 2 May 2012 MUEL 2752 A Future Set in Wax It wasnt until I was 13 that I came to know

vinyl records. Sure, the warm hum of the needle in the grooves of George Joness greatest hits may have been the soundtrack to my childhood summers in Upstate New York, but it remained background music until we moved away from there. Leaving behind the house youve lived in for 2 decades can be a very cathartic experience. To my father, rediscovering his old record collection as we worked to pack up our lives in Pennsylvania sparked in him a need to follow the whim of his nostalgia. Such excited return to memory often becomes contagious, and I was drawn into the collection as well. As a natural gas salesman thats very verbally enthusiastic about his work, listening to my dad talk about his vinyl is among few times I need no effort to stay engrossed in what he is saying. The connection he feels to those physical relics of his happiest moments is one that I would come to see in every vinyl junkie as I sought the connection myself. While my fathers collection came from simply growing up and buying music in the only form available, my vinyl collection would take much more work. Buying music at Big Box retailers was what I, along with 65% of music shoppers even today, grew up knowing in the early 2000s. Today, one in five albums purchased is done so at Wal-Mart. With 30,000 new album titles released each year, but mere 1,000s of titles total carried in most Big Box stores, I wasnt going to find the old or rare vinyl that I sought in these places. In a capitalism driven corporation, where album sales dropped 20% from 2006 to 2007 and the competitive takeover of mp3 looms, I wasnt going to find any vinyl there at all (Toller). In reality, with over 3,000 independent record stores closing in the last decade, vinyl can often barely pay the rent in the stores that have come to adopt it entirely. The upcoming

Cording 2 generation seems to prefer the appeal of more easily accessed, digital music. The rise of obtaining music, both legal and illegal in the online setting, is said to be killing the record industry as a whole, hitting first these small music businesses. While vinyl sales may account for only 1% of music sold at this point, the iTunes store carries less than 1% of the available music catalogue in the world (Toller). Music should never come unattached from the passion and the dedication that went in to making it. By watering down so much the value of music, by tossing it a search bar and some server space on a website, music will only come to lose importance to us as a society. The supposedly obvious superiority of online music seems far less obvious to me. Even beyond my father, Im not alone with this thought, as despite so much working against it, vinyl survives. With the rise and fall of at least three more advanced forms of recordings occurring since the heyday of vinyl, it seems like an anomaly that the technology still remains. There exists an invincible love for listening to music in this way, along with a love for the way that it is purchased, bubbling still, quietly and steadily, beneath the American music scene. When it comes down to it, were all hunter-gatherers, offers Doug Gaddy, owner of Absolute Vinyl, an independent record store just east of downtown Boulder. Shopping for stuff online is fun, ordering from Amazon is one thing, but doing nothing but downloading tracks creates such disconnect from the musicits too easy. There is a tribal-like quality in the search for music, especially in a community that shares the passion for it the way that patrons of independent record stores do. Gaddy opened Absolute Vinyl in January of 2010 because, Boulder needed a record store. The previous vinyl store staple of the community, Barts CD Cellar, had just announced its closing, other record stores had taken more and more toward selling CDs rather than vinyl in hopes of staying afloat; the niche was unfilled. Gaddys collection, built up over three decades, was something that he wanted to share with the public.

Cording 3 Selling primarily vintage music and strictly vinyl, Absolute Vinyl is doing well, according to Gaddy. He acknowledges that, to enough people, its still worth the hunt. Like the rummaging through a sea of oddity that I, and so many still opt to do at flea markets, its the hunt that gets you the good stuff. Theres risk of uncertainty in looking for that one rare, obscure album, or that certain press of an LP. It took me a year of searching to find a Judy Garland record that contained my favorite recording of hers, Meet Me in St. Louis. Over that year, I still bought nearly every record of Judys I had found that didnt contain the song, but the moment that I finally found one that did, upstairs at Barts on Pearl, was unbelievably satisfying. Theres a bigger emotional payoff in owning music that you tracked down and worked to find, finally holding it in your hands. Opposing that side of the spectrum, it seems just as easy to find love in an independent record store that you had no idea you were seeking. The community aspect of stores like these gives rise to a reliance and a trust in suggestion. Theres a living breathing person there with their opinions, says Gaddy of taking music suggestions from employees or fellow shoppers of the store. Of course, there are the modern, internet sources that offer up their musical suggestions, but the sway of business, money, and the often stunting popular or shared opinion too frequently run amuck at those outlets. Youve got to be able to trust the source of the information, or you risk following the crowd, Gaddy quips, and when you get to know those giving you these suggestions, it sure beats 36 people who bought this album also bought this! A machine and an algorithm cannot replace the word of someone you know and like. In these communities, a passion for music fuels employees, that same passion brings in and keeps in customers, and the interaction of the two breeds nothing but further love of music. The existence of independent record stores themselves, against all of the struggles they may face, is an

Cording 4 indication of a passion that is worth noting. Much more than a loss of aesthetics is the consequence of the loss of these stores; according to statistics, towns with more local businesses are typically more civically active (Toller). Buying locally also keeps a larger percentage of the tax dollars in the community, meaning schools don't have to close, potholes get fixed, and so on, (Guarini). While shopping at local stores provides the customer with a close-knit community, the customers shopping there are doing work to create a larger, stronger one themself. The experience of art does its best work for everyone when it is a shared one. Last semester in my honors seminar, three students in a class of only 16 or so brought up the fact that they had record players not simply in their homes, but in their dorm rooms. In the compacted life that is lived out in a dorm, there becomes room for only the most important items. To note that a record player lived up to that role for those people is indicative of the varied fanbase that vinyl has come to attract. There is a seemingly growing younger crowd that is discovering vinyl as something important. Though a taste for vintage or classic music opens up a lot of options in LP choice, just as it is not reserved for older customers, vinyl is not reserved for older music. Many bands press their new album releases on vinyl, despite the fact that doing so is more expensive than strictly CD and digital releases. In the confines of supply and demand that music still functions within, this wouldnt be done if there were not a market for it. I prefer not to call it a comeback or a resurgence, Doug Gaddy says of the customer base at his record store. Of course, Boulder being a demographically young town, a lot of the crowd in the store is young, but in order to have a comeback, vinyl would have had to have gone away. My fathers well-loved collection of vinyl was what drew me into stores like Dougs to begin with, but my father will still always outspend me there. Many that grew up with vinyl, simply never left. Like Gaddy, who owns no iPod and saw no benefit in buying into the inferior quality of CDs

Cording 5 even after 30 years of being bombarded with their hype. Granted, at any age, it is hard not to love the experience of vinyl if you love music; LPs have a way of forcing you to slow down and really hear music as more than the background noise of portable listening. The effect is enough to hold relevance across such a wide stretch of generations. With so few media outlets maintaining that large of a demographic today, it goes to show vinyls serious staying power. I just get up and go to work tomorrow, Gaddy is quick with his answer to a question about the future of his business, I have my exit strategy in place in case of a double-dipper recession or something worse. Im going to enjoy whats happening now and hope it continues. Having an exit strategy at the ready for your business may seem to cast a shadow on optimism, but it acknowledges reality. There is no avoidance of the realization that there are not many stores like Dougs left in existence. Still, none of those stores would be open if there wasnt hope in the business. In 2011, vinyl sales grew 39% with a reported 4 million pieces of vinyl sold. Sixty-seven percent of these sales came from independent record stores like Dougs (Guarini). When everything took a hit in the recession, what could have been the final exit of records seems now to be just another hurdle that it would come to clear. People still love vinyl, whether it is for the adventure of buying it, the community in seeking it, the nostalgia of returning to it, or just the reward of the actual listening experience. With my sorry excuse for a college budget, I plan on putting whatever I can in to businesses like Dougs. I crave a haven of music junkies in my downtime between concert shows, but I know where I can always find it. Always may seem too strong or too ignorant a word to use in discussing something as unstable as the music business today, but I dont think my confidence is blind. When I told Doug Gaddy that he was the first person to respond to my wide-sent email inquiries about local independent record stores, he laughs with his response, well, maybe thats why I stay afloat; I bother to give

Cording 6 a hoot! And as long as he does, I doubt the world will have a reason to mourn the loss of vinyl anytime soon.

References Guarini, Drew. "Record Store Day: Saving Independent Music Stores Since 2008." Huffington Post 20 April 2012, n. pag. Web. 4 May. 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com >. Gaddy, Doug. Telephone Interview. 1 May 2012. Toller, Brendan, dir. I Need That Record! The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store. MVD Visual, 2010. Film.

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