Warm Analog Grooves
&
The Resurgence of Vinyl
I’ve been a
vinyl freak for most of my life. It all started when my older brother brought
home groovy 45’s like Take A Look (My Friend) by the Bossmen, East Side Story
by Bob Seger & the Last Heard and 96 Tears by Question Mark & the
Mysterians. I liked Question Mark the best because he lived on the 800 block of
Howard Street next door to my cousin Sally Rork. She arranged a meeting between my idol and my
brother and me. It was a prophecy and a promise for better things to come.
Question Mark told us to buy all his 45’s so we did. We bought “I Need
Somebody” “Can’t Get Enough of You Baby”,” Girl (You Captivate Me),” and “Do Something To Me.” I then turned my
attention to The Bossmen (On The Road, Baby Boy), Terry Knight & the Pack
(Mister, You’re A Better Man Than I), the Excels (California on My Mind) and
Bob Seger’s Heavy Music, salacious boner rock & roll. I was coming of age.
The first albums I bought were “The Beatles 65 and the “Beach Boys Today.” They
were Christmas gifts for my mother. She seemed really delighted my largesse. As
I continued my quest for everything vinyl I bought albums by the Frost, The
Beatles, Bob Seger System, the Dave Clark 5, the Tremeloes and the Beatles…loved
those fabulous harmonies and that insistent big beat. I had it bad and though
the seventies, eighties and the new millennium I collected thousands of albums
from record stores, mail order catalogs, and garage sales. I bought so many
albums from Who Put the Bomp, a mail order magazine that I had a first name
relationship with the owner Greg Shaw. He was a true believer and so was I. But
then I would get the itch and I would sell all that beautiful vinyl and start
all over again, only to repeat this agony like a modern Sisyphus pushing the
boulder up the mountain. I continued this pattern of behavior many times until
I settled into a comfortable relationship with eBay for the long haul,
purchasing back my last big collection until I was suitably embarrassed. My
story is not dissimilar to anyone who loves music. To this day I do not regret
a single moment in my quest for vinyl. It’s a hunger that cannot be quenched.
Fred Reif
has been in the trenches and witnessed the guerilla warfare of the record collecting
industry. He had his own store in Saginaw before he moved over to Ann Arbor to
run Schoolkids records. He has bought and sold countless record collections in
his time and he’s pretty savvy about how this industry appeals to teenagers as
well as aging baby boomers. He scratches his head about the new age collectors
buying habits. Recently Fred watched it happen in Frankenmuth where teenagers
would buy albums by Kiss, Neil Diamond, Barbara Streisand, Willie Nelson as
well as the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane. The younger generation is building
their own collections, buying the easy ones first before diving into the more
expensive collectable albums (and 45’s). At this stage in their collecting
hobby they are primarily picking up the hits. The aging baby boomers are
getting rid of the records, rock & roll became rock! Fred realizes that
vinyl gets only a small percentage of the sales something like 2% to 6%. In the
past few months Jazz recordings are so stalled out those classical recordings
are doing better. The 55 and 65 year old demographic is still buying vinyl, but
they are not playing the records. Fred listens primarily to Caribbean music but
he sells lots of Rock & Roll and Blues 78’s. He sells on eBay but it’s a
mixed bag, “It’s harder to sell on eBay because they raised their fees. I used
to get 50 free ads a month, now it’s only 20 free ads, plus I’m charged 10% for
the sale and 10%for the charge on shipping.” To Fred eBay is trying to get rid
of the smaller dealer and Record Store Day promotes vinyl, it’s a free ad for
record stores – like Sweetest Day. “I buy obscure stuff and I go to thrift
stores everyday, says Fred, I buy collections, most are junk but if I’m lucky
I’ll get my money back. I like 45’s the most, that’s all we needed to have, travelling
bands would come into town the popularity of one song, like Incense &
Peppermints.”
A long time
connoisseur of vinyl requested anonymity. But his voice is heard loud and clear.
“This is an energizing time period in the last three years, 50% of my sales are
high school and college kids. In the 90’s Jack White pushed vinyl and it
promoted interest in other records.” By
2000 eBay changed this for the next 5-10 years.
Now people want to buy things. “Stores are seeing teens buy regular LPs
like Hall & Oates and John Mellencamp. The classic stuff by the Beatles,
Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Rush are gone, you can hardly find them anywhere
(for a reasonable price). Young collectors want the original package. They want
to hear the pops and clicks in the music.” In the last 15 years vinyl has been
dumped, destroyed and thrown away. Millions of records ended up in the
landfills. However on the other side of that equation were the grandparents of
the new age collectors are giving their collections to their grandchildren or
they would take their parents records and the parents didn’t care. Vinyl became
HOT again! Now you see stores pop up from Flint and Frankenmuth to Detroit, New
York, Los Angeles and even Brazil. For my anonymous connoisseur the lust for
vinyl is growing, “kids buy vinyl, they have to take care of it, clean it and
put it on the turntable, it’s a whole
vinyl experience, vinyl is something that you physically own but once it’s
gone, it cannot be replaced. Music is a personal thing. Preserve your vinyl!”
I contacted
Jordan Pries from Electric Kitsch to get his view on the resurgence of vinyl.
“Vinyl …it’s almost new again. Their parents got rid of their collections so
their children grew up with CD’s and downloads. So it’s almost a new format
again.” Pries cites the White Stripes and the Black Keys who were total vinyl
heads, to the resurgence of record collecting. “Young people liked those bands
and the bands pushed vinyl, it’s like a new way of approaching music. It’s not
like reading a great book which is a different media, with the ascendance of
the internet music became a something you download, not something you hold and
place on a turntable. They could release one song at almost no cost for a
physical format. For Pries there is more than music at stake, art work, credits
and cool liner notes would be lost. Pries sees younger people buying newer
records that aren’t cheap. “They will pay $15-30 dollars and it’s mostly newer
music from artists like Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys, Amy Winehouse and Lana
Delray. Some teens and adults will buy a record a week.” Reissues and Box sets
have been very popular lately especially with classic rockers like Led
Zeppelin, Beatles and Pink Floyd. Jordan
recalls his early days of collecting. “Tuesdays were usually the release date.
We used to get in line at midnight to get the latest releases such as The
Battle of Los Angeles by Rage Against the Machine or Pantera’s The Great southern
Trend Kill.” Pries cites industry sales figures for vinyl – 3 million last
year; 9.6 million this year so far and should reach 16 million! It should
double production. United Pressing is
pressing hundreds of thousands of discs. A buyer from Wichita Kansas found 13
record pressing machines. He will now have capacity to produce huge quantities
of vinyl LPs. For Jordan Pries record collecting is personal, “My dad was a
record collector and he gave me his collection of classic rock & roll
albums that included Del Shannon, The Byrds, The Beatles and Pentangle. My dad
was also a musician; he played the organ and was in a popular band called the
Coachmen. They released two 45’s on the Target label out of Wisconsin, Girl in
the Wind and Hey Bulldog.” Pries cites Jack White and his Third Man Records for
bringing some sanity to record collecting. “He wants record stores to survive.
They will sell to stores like mine so I can sell LPs cheaper.”
In December
of 1974 Bill and Judy Wegner opened Records & Tapes Galore. At that time
the industry sold vinyl albums and 8 track tapes and cassettes were starting to
gain a following. Bill Wegner explains, “We sold a lot of albums, several
thousands. We had a one stop distributer who would get all the labels like
Capitol, CBS, Warner Brothers and RCA. For a small store we did really well.
They pushed hard and always had promos to give away. A particular rack jobber
had an old beat up car, he was a bit frumpy and looked like Peter Falk.” Bill
had an open invitation to take anything the man offered even if it was the
latest, hot off the presses LPs from major artists like Deep Purple or Joe
Walsh. The idea was that Bill would play the freebies in the store to promote
sales. Bill’s business was booming though the seventies and eighties but it
slowed down in the nineties. “CDs came out in 1984, Bill recalls, and it just
exploded. RCA promoted CDs as the perfect sound forever…but it was actually the
imperfect sound forever.” This led to a mass exodus of from vinyl, people got
junked their turntables and bought CD players. Bill recalls, “At one point the
industry jettisoned vinyl altogether. By the 1990’s very few albums were being
produced and in the mid-nineties LPs ceased production except for a few
boutique labels. In 2015 album sales have exploded again and companies are
having difficulty keeping up with the demand. It is a marriage of technology
and art.”
Bill admits
that he sold a ton of CDs during a brief renaissance that emerged in 2010/11.
“It is a tribute to several movies that had prominent roles for DJ’s and kids
got interested and the DJ became a focal point. He would play the music loudly
and use two turntables that could allow the DJ to mix one song into another.
Discotheques were prominent and the DJ was the hero. Vinyl was featured in
these films, it took the place of the record shop.” Bill has his pulse on the
action, he knows that kids have MP3’s but highs and lows are chopped off . Bill
says, “Its music but not all of the music.” There is no doubt that kids got
into their father’s vinyl collection. It was like tasting forbidden fruit. The
kids learned by watching dad dust off the vinyl, hold it carefully on the edges and set the needle
down on the grooves…heaven! Bill is knows that people from one era have an
affinity for music from their time, makes sense. Bill reports that older folks
are energized by the resurgence. “The LPs that are coming out now are 2/3 new
releases and 1/3 reissues,” says Bill, “Is it a fad or will it sustain and
grow. It’s hard to tell.”
“I love
music and records do have power for me, it involves me more and compels me to
drop my newspaper and listen intently to those beautiful sounds”
Bo White
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