" It comes back to my dad. And you know, the older I’m getting myself, I find myself returning to a lot of the music my dad played to me when I was younger."
~ Ashley Beedle
“Have you learned anything from your collection? What have your records taught you about yourself? Will there always be more to learn?
I would guess that your record stack began with what you were most into at the time you started collecting. But whether you were a rocker, a raver, a hip-hopper, or a funkster, your first records were only an entry point to the wider world of music.
When I scored my first stereo back in the late ’70s, my peers were 100% rock-n-roll fans. If you were a stoner, that was the soundtrack to coming of age in Western Colorado — otherwise it was Country Western music, and that was a line we weren’t about to cross.
My background was a bit different. Along about 6th grade, my folks pulled me out of school and we spent a year circumnavigating the US, Mexico, and Canada in a converted Greyhound bus.
Aside from the CB radio, (which was a lot of fun, btw), we were equipped with an 8-track tape player. We had a dozen or so tapes to keep us company on the road, and due to my parent’s preferences, rock-n-roll was absent.
Most of our meager collection would now be called Americana. Albums by Roy Clark, Johnny Cash, and Buck Owens. Dueling Banjos — the soundtrack to Deliverance. A novelty album by Ray Stevens. And Will the Circle be Unbroken, the classic collaboration with old-timers by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
But at a truck stop of all places, I found Switched-On Bach and the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, early electronic productions on the Moog synthesizer by Walter (later Wendy) Carlos.
My folks would ride in front while I would sit in back under a speaker, boggled by these wild sounds.
And let me tell you, that Moog got under my skin! Once we settled down after the bus trip my North Star was music, the weirder the better. I managed to buy my first stereo when I was 14.
My older brother had given me a copy of Venus and Mars by Paul McCartney and Wings for my birthday. I was ready to fire up my new Technics turntable and Pioneer amp with some records of my own choosing.
So when I first ventured into a record store with seven or eight hard-earned dollars in my hand, it wasn’t Led Zeppelin or the Stones that I brought home.
Nope, it was Georgio Moroder who earned my cash. My first purchase was the LP I Remember Yesterday by Donna Summers featuring the all-time disco banger I Feel Love. The shop had it playing it when I went in, I think it had just came out. Moroder’s beats were a revelation.
Fast forward a few decades from that first foray into vinyl and I’d gone thru phases of Punk, Industrial, Reggae, Dub, Soul, and Funk — and then in the 90s — Techno, House, and Disco.
As for the ’60s, I’d long been tuned in to the hip music of the era. Between my older brother who had one foot in the Summer of Love and the top-40 tunes on the AM radio when I was a little kid in LA riding around in the back of my dad’s Mustang, I had a pretty good handle on who was who and what was cool.
Where I was in the dark was with the uncool music of the era. The cheesy stuff I’d dismissed growing up.
The ‘00s came along and suddenly I was a single dad raising a kid with a garage full of records piled up from bulk buying old collections at estate sales and crate digging at thrift stores.
I started paying attention to Easy Listening music from the 50s and 60s. Records you could imagine would be on the hi-fi if the Mad Men had a cocktail party.
Much was dreck, as you might imagine. But digging deeper, nuggets appeared. I made friends with long-forgotten artists who were bangers in their time.
Trini Lopez. Nelson Riddle. Ray Charles. The Three Suns. Ella Fitzgerald. Louis Armstrong. Harry Belafonte. The Harmonicats. And so on.
A lot of this music was jazz-adjacent, acting as a gateway drug as it were. But that’s a story for another time
.Giving this uncool music a chance was like inhaling the ambience into which I’d been born. To hear a live recording of Trini Lopez singing Am-er-i-ca, recorded in LA about the time I was conceived, is to take the zeitgeist of the era straight to the heart.
Vinyl is a journey, a companion, a living metaphor for life. The magnetically encoded grooves somehow carry the consciousness of faraway artists deep into the marrow of your bones. Records are worth all the trouble it takes to tote them around.
They’ll help you come full circle too. Just keep them spinning, and let one lead to another.
Thanks for reading, much love, and I’ll see you on the New Moon!
M+
Mark Metz
Analog Press
Lunar Note #4
Lunar Notes Mailing List
$2.99 e-promo ends soon
Analog reading is best in print.
No worries if you have an e-reader,
but for gift giving or relaxing, enjoy
the pleasure of the printed page.
Who is Ashley Beedle?
Well, for the House-heads on this list, he needs no introduction. For those unfamiliar, he’s a UK-based DJ, record producer, and label boss with more credits under his belt than I can count.
We were born in the same year, so I feel like our journey has a lot in common. His remix of Voices by The Police sends chills up my spine every time I play it.
His quote leads off the chapter in Vinyl Vitality titled Analog Parenting, which may well become the entry point for an entirely different book.
I’ve seen the difference it makes to have a turntable and a record collection in the house when you’re raising kids. His quote points to how records can come full circle in a person‘s life.
Vinyl Vitality is meant for parents of young kids as much as it’s aimed at DJs, collectors, and record store owners. If you haven’t grabbed a copy for yourself yet, perhaps there’s a parent on your list who needs it?
Bookstores should have it well before Christmas. I’m supposed to get the green light for wider distribution any day now. Until then, there’s always Amazon.
Merci et au revoir!
M+