the most pretentious thing i do

showing that I know what a record is

I grow a beard, I have been known to wear skinny jeans, I enjoy indie music that no one else has heard of, and I listen to jazz.  Despite this list of pretentious things that could drive most people to judge me severely, the most pretentious thing I do is buying and listening to vinyl records.

Listening to records is not inherently pretentious (unless you’re under thirty five years of age) however there is a contingent of people who believe that those under thirty five listening to records are pretentious.  There has never been a need for my generation to buy a vinyl LP.  With the advent of CD’s and now MP3’s all the music we could ever want is right at our fingertips, more accessible and portable than ever before.

In my early teens I had a brief obsession with vinyl.  I didn’t have a record player in my room so if I wanted to listen to them I would have to bother the entire family.  They weren’t exactly thrilled by the musical stylings of Big Black, the Lemonheads, Bikini Kill, or the Melvins.  I rarely listened to them and they were bought mostly because I liked the idea of owning records.

It had been years since I bought a record but last November I inherited an Audio Technica turntable and decided that I wanted to start listening to LP’s again.  I raided my parents collection and began scouring used record and bookstores for my favorite classic albums; Lou Reed, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Charles Mingus, and Patti Smith.

The prime time for used record buying was about ten to fifteen years ago.  The nostalgia of the vinyl era had not yet kicked in and the baby boomers were busily selling off their record collection and replacing them with CD’s.  Now that they come back en vogue, good used records are hard to find.  You need to rely on luck and good timing to snatch up a well priced classic.

Part of the fund of record collecting is in the hunt for your favorites.  Many have been reissued and range in price from $12 to $40.  This is a spread that makes most baby boomers cringe.

I didn’t start buying records because of their supposed higher sound quality.  I didn’t start because it’s what the hipsters are doing (Though I will not deny that when you spin a record on a turn table you do feel a little more cool).  I started because listening to a vinyl LP is a far different experience from what we have now.

Two sides, a brief intermission as you flip the record, no playlists, just one album all the way through.  I began to hear songs in ways I never had before, like each one was a  piece to a puzzle that I only begin to see when the the needle lifts and the arm retracts.

Where this really becomes pretentious on my part is that I also buy new LP’s by my favorite indie bands; LAKE, Chain and the Gang, Christmas, Thao & Mirah.  There is no logical reason for buying these, although often you will get a code for downloading the MP3’s with the record.  I get the same listening experience from these as I do the classics.  I found that I appreciate them as an actual song enjoyed by itself not just as something to occupy myself while doing other things.

Vinyl has a special quality to it, a testament to a time of well built goods.  It proves that sometimes they get it right the first time.  No one is clamoring to get a hold of videotapes because of their superior quality to Blu-Ray, and most people would prefer to drive a Ford Focus over a Model-T.  Vinyl stands the true test of time as the pinnacle of music quality.

Those who don’t understand what makes vinyl special just see pretentious people who refuse to change with the time or want only to go against the grain.  They look at us the way some see handlebar mustaches, bow ties, and typewriters.  They are the devices of those who prefer to live ironically, this was cemented when Urban Outfitters began selling turn tables and only hipster records.

My new found love for records is neither ironic or novelty, I honestly enjoy buying and listening to them.  I’m not anti MP3 or technology, I just prefer the vinyl record.  It’s such simple technology that also happens to be the best.  This still makes the entire act of buying and listening pretentious, but honestly I don’t give a shit.

By the way if you come across a copy of Lou Reed’s Transformer, let me know.

posted by: brian snider

just kids

can't recommend this book enough

I don’t need to write a review of this book.  It has already gained high praise from many critics including winning the national book award for nonfiction.  That said, I was surprised by just how incredible the book was, and so I wanted to share it with you in hopes that you’ll come to enjoy its magnificence too.

I know that a book is truly exceptional when I read the end and ignoring all my instincts as a writer, I wish that there were another three hundred pages.  I just was not ready to leave the world of this book.

Just Kids is musician/poet/artist Patti Smith’s tale of her life with controversial artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, from the late 1960’s through the 70’s and into the 80’s ending with Roberts death from AIDS in 1989.

Smith begins the book with a brief account of her early life and then like a spider begins to spin an incredible web as she recounts meeting, becoming lovers and best friends with Mapplethorpe.  Her web extends from Brooklyn to the Village and includes the Chelsea Hotel, Max’s: Kansas City, and CBGB’s.  She ensnares and extracts stories of her various encounters; her relationship with Sam Shepard, Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Robert Mappelthorpe’s eventual partner Sam Waggstaff.

Her experience as a poet allows her to manipulate language and summon up horrifying, beautiful, and romantic images.  She has an innate ability to let her voice in the book grow from that of a naive twenty year old struggling to find work and places to spend the night in New York.  Then into an experienced mother of two lovingly describing the final time a very ill Mapelthorpe photographed her as she held her newly born daughter Jesse.

The book is uniquely her voice, I could easily hear her speaking it as I read.  While you should despise her as a name dropping pretentious artist, but instead you fall in love with her as she very honestly tells the story.

I usually expect the authors of these books to paint a more flattering picture of themselves, however Smith seemed not to censor herself exposing honest feelings that surprised me. I expected Smith to be an unabashed supporter of Mappelthorpe’s more controversial pictures, instead she freely admits that much of his work challenged her and sometimes found them difficult to understand.

Occasionally in telling the story she would arrive at a period where events were fuzzy and incomplete, she would piece them together brilliantly using small nostalgic vignettes.

The book ends with a mystic meditation on life and death as it becomes a love letter for her and Robert Mapplethorpe, New York city, and an incredible time in America full of good, bad, evil and almost indescribable beauty.

This book was recommended to me by Jaime who read and fell in love with it first.  One selfish evening in LA last year I denied her the opportunity to see Patti Smith at Skylight books and tried to make up for that with a signed first edition copy for Christmas.  I now recommend this book to you, I guaranty you won’t be disappointed. 
posted by: brian snider