Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

Often whenever a combination of words sounds really pleasing, those will be the ones that stick in my mind for days afterwards, regardless of how pertinent they were to whatever I’d been reading…for example, in Ross’s article “The Record Effect” I came away with “fizz and crackle” tumbling in my mind. He used those words to describe the warm effects of vinyl records, and ever since I’ve been itching to listen to a proper record. A good friend of mine collects records, and we found a  vinyl of assorted versions of R. Kelly’s Remix to Ignition at Goodwill one day. There was an a cappella version, an instrumental track…that find was definitely a high point of our summer. I don’t know if the sound of the record was done justice, as it was played on a vinyl-to-mp3 converter that ultimately piped the songs through computer speakers. I know that many bands choose to release on vinyl even today, despite the near-obscurity of the medium, and combined with the fact that there remain many committed fans of the form (though that might be true of any phased-out product), there must be something really special about records. I also remembered how Ross wrote about recent musicians incorporating those fizzes and pops digitally into their songs to lend them an antiquated feel. While listening to some music on shuffle, I came across about two bands that did just that. I’m thinking of buying a record player, since I’ve always come across interesting looking records at flea markets and garage sales. Do you listen to records? Do you have any recommendations?