A trip to the record store and a few record reviews.

Well, today I made my way over to the record store.  After all, I simply don't have enough albums.  Don't believe me?  Just ask my wife, she'll tell you.  When I get to a record store I always have a checklist in my mind of records that I am looking for.  They start with records that I have been looking for for a long time that I don't own.  Then I am looking for records that will replace ones that are "worn out" or that the pressing just didn't sound very good.  After that, I am just looking for something that looks interesting or that I had heard about but never picked up.

So today's trip was to Tom's Music Trade over in Red Lion, PA.  I love that place and Tom is easily one of the nicest guys that you will ever meet.  Wanna talk vinyl, this is the mecca of vinyl.  Back in high school I lived in Virginia and frequented a place called Penguin Feather.  It was a really great place to hang out, buy records, listen to records and well heck, just talk about records.  Tom's Music Trade is just like that.  He has thousands of records on the floor but I would guess he probably has that many over again in stock that he doesn't have the space to show.  I have gone to some record shops and they may have a couple of thousand records but they never have anything new on the floor.  Tom is always looking for more records.  He is a real record store.

Anyway, enough of the free plug.  So I had 2 targets on my list today and maybe 5 others that were I'd like to have if I find them but since a few of them I haven't found in years I wasn't holding my breath.
I have been looking for a replacement for my Bruce Springsteen The River album for years and while they are actually out there and for the most part readily available, because it was such a popular record and was often handled by kids, most of the copies that are available are really worn and not worth the few bucks that people are asking.  Well less than 2 minutes into my perusal of the record bins what do I find?  Bruce Springsteen's The River, new, unopened first pressing.  WOW!  Successful trip!  I couldn't believe my luck so I am thinking okay I probably won't find anything else that I am looking for.  So then I think, well I am looking for Genesis' Wind & Wuthering and Selling England By The Pound.  What are the chances that I can find both in good shape if at all.  After all, both were released when Genesis was a real progressive band before there pop years; which I think they were brilliant as a pop band too, I just prefer their progressive rock years.  I would have been happy to find just one.  I bought a copy of Selling England By The Pound several years ago and it was an ok buy but the record had been handled quite a bit and you could tell.  So, to my absolute delight I found both!  I paid $12 for just Selling England By The Pound a few years ago but today I picked up both for a grand total of $5.  I was thinking, oh boy.  These are going to sound like I'm playing a pizza on my turntable.  NOPE!  Both are clean and good copies!  Life is good.  Surely I won't find anything else that I have been looking for right?  WRONG!

I am a closet Pete Townsend fan, I think his song writing is brilliant and his musicianship speaks for itself.  One of my top albums of all time is White City, he was pure genius on that record.  So I have a CD of his All Of The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes. I love this CD because of how different it is.  I mean it is a lot different than everything else he has done before.  It is far more pop like.  It is also a CD that I can listen to start to finish not get tired of.  So I always wanted the album but I have never found it anywhere.  Well, Tom had it (of course) for the whopping price of a buck.  Again, I am thinking a dollar record when I haven't been able to find it anywhere else, it is going to sound awful!  Nope, sounds EXCELLENT!  Once again, Tom is golden.

So now I am ready to head out and I get to thinking, my copy of the Moody Blues Days of Future Past is a bit worn.  Wonder if there is a better copy than I have.  So, not to be disappointed there it was and for $2.  I know that he is making money at what he is doing, not sure how because his prices are so low but heck, he seems to be doing ok.  Oh, and I put it on the turntable and it sounds great!  Once again.

So I have saved the best of my finds for last.  For this one we have to go back to 1971.  That was the year that one of my top 3 favorite records was released.  That was the year that the new band called Wings formed and released their debut album called Wild Life.  It was panned by much of the musical establishment.  I don't see how they didn't like it then because here we are 40 years later and I still think it is pure musical genius, and here is the brilliance of not only Paul McCartney but the whole band.  5 of the 8 songs were done on the first take.  It was recorded live in the studio with the best recording engineer to ever grace a studio: none other than Alan Parsons. He put the magic in to the Dark Side of the Moon and I think that he breathed life into Wild Life.  My dad bought Wild Life for me and it was probably the 5th record that I had ever owned.  Somewhere over time it went missing; until today.  I have been sad for probably 20 years that I didn't have that record and every record store that I go into I always take a peek to see if they have it.  So, the record that I have coveted for the past 20 years or so I picked up today for whopping grand total of $3.  I will admit that I came home, went straight to the turntable, put it on and just listened, twice.  I think that I may have to take another listen later, a few more times.  It was Wings at their best and probably least commercial.  How can anyone not listen and marvel at the songwriting?  From the first beat of Mumbo you hear the heart of the Beatles. and Bip Bop sounds like something that could have been recorded in a barn at the end of a dirt road in 1920's Alabama.  Alan Parsons captured the essence of the song and dirtied it up as only he could.  Love Is Strange is one of the coolest swinging grooves of that era or well actually, any era.  Danny Seiwell laid down one of the coolest and funkiest grooves to what is in my opinion one of the songs that is probably one of the toughest to cover because everyone expects to hear Mickey & Sylvia's kind of easy beat.  Denny is far to funky for that and thank heavens for that!  The harmonies on this song are also classic Wings and when you listen to all of their albums it is a hallmark of their brand.  That said, this song was recorded in just one take.  Listen to that song with everything going on in it and you will instantly see why I call it one of the 3 best albums I have ever owned. My dad once said to me, Kevin (because that is my name) you can listen to this record and hear the difference between John Lennon's wife and Paul McCarney's wife.  Linda has talent, Yoko has none.  I challenge everyone to prove me wrong.  Linda was such a strong presence on this record with not just her abilities on keyboards but also her backing vocals.  She doesn't sound like a cat in heat (like Yoko), she just sounds hot.  Dear Friend is in my opinion the greatest song to end an album.  When I listen to that song, it really sums up the band.  Wings was just a bunch of friends having a lot of fun.  This song outlines enduring great friendships.

I guess to round out my trip to the record store I had to pick up an album that is universally loved.  James Taylor's JT called my name as I walked passed it.  I have the record but I bought it in a used bin many many years ago.  It was in pretty heinous shape then and I have never really played it which is a shame because I really love that album.  I saw it today for a dollar and picked it up.  It is in far better condition than the one that I had so I am very happy about that.  It isn't in perfect condition but after a really good cleaning I can play it and be quite satisfied with my $1 purchase.

 So, my trip to the record store today far exceeded my expectations.  If you can't tell, I love Tom's Music Trade.  If you are in the south Central PA, Northern Maryland area please check out his store.  You will not be disappointed.  If you are outside of our area, he is on the web at www.tomesmusictrade.com.  If you have a record that you are really looking hard for give him a call.  He will take a look to see if he has it, 717-246-5712.  Finding quality record dealers that truly understand records is so hard to find.  Lots of people sell them few can actually talk about them.  Tom can. 

So I have to settle an argument.

While extolling the virtues of vinyl over CD a friend of mine sent me a message on my facebook page saying that there was no way that a record could sound better than a CD.  The CD is so much cleaner and it doesn't wear out over time.  The music is more dynamic he says.  REALLY?  Well on 2 of those points I will concede, they are cleaner sounding.  In quiet passages on a CD you hear nothing and I mean nothing.  But, what if in those quiet passages you are supposed to hear something, maybe a singer taking a very dramatic soft breath or soft resonances of a guitar string that softly decays into the next note?  Sure if you don't take care of your vinyl you may also have some unwanted hiss from dust but keep them clean and take care of the needle  on your cartridge and that problem isn't such a problem.  He is right, records do wear out, that is a point I can't argue but the reality is that it takes thousands of plays for a record to wear out and I have indeed worn out records, few but I have worn some out.  That brings us to his point of CDs being more dynamic.  I scoff at this because simple physics tells us that this is impossible and the human ear can attest to it.

Now, about this dynamic thing.  Let us first take a look at the facts of a CD.  A digital signal chops up an analog signal into parts at 44,100 times per second.  It looks at each part to make sure that everything is the same.  CDs use 16 bit so each of those digital chops has to be one out of 65,536 (simple math here).  So that right there tells us that a digital recording isn't actually capturing the sound wave as originally played.  Don't believe me?  Listen to Pink Floyd's Time and take a listen to the drums on vinyl then the CD, you would be hard pressed to think that the CD is capturing the full tone of the drums.  Listen to Spyro Gyro's Morning Dance, same thing.  You lose so much of the steel drum that all you are left with is a high pitched mass of mess.  The vinyl recording you can hear the tone of the steel drum and the decay of each note but I digress.

A vinyl record is different, very different.  Each groove on a record is cut as an exact wave form of the original sound wave from the instrument or vocal.  If the microphone can pick it up it is cut into the original wax recording.  There is no chopping of the signal at all.  One thing that people often say when listening to vinyl after not hearing it for many years is how much more lifelike the music sounds.  How much fuller the tone is and how much more natural the bass is.  It is because the signal isn't being compared to a bit rate, the turntable is simply reproducing the note as the original wave form was recorded. 

DVD actually is getting closer to almost half of what music actually sounds like and well, it is a step in the right direction but even at 24 bit and a sampling rate of 193kHz it is still very very far off.  If you do the simple math, that is about 16,777,216 tiny little chops of information.  Still not really close to the actual sound wave.

In the end, it comes down to whether you want your music exactly as it was recorded or if you are satisfied with something close.  I prefer mine as recorded and apparently a lot of bands and musicians like their music as close to the original recording as well as more and more are releasing their new music on vinyl again.  Death Cab For Cutie, Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Matt Costa, the Cars and Forever The Sickest Kids have recently released their new albums on vinyl.  Turntables, cartridges and needles haven't changed much in the past 50 years or so but the means by which bands master their music in the studio have and some of those changes do make a record sound more dynamic.  People laugh at me but I say that John Mayer's Room For Squares is one of the best sounding records that I have ever bought.  The bass on that record at lower volumes vibrates things on my desk across the room, you can actually hear the sweet decay each time the drummer hits his hi hat, you can actually hear the tone in each of the guitar strings and you can hear every breath that he takes before he sings.  Almost all of that is lost on CD, I know, I've played one over the other switching back and forth between CD and vinyl.  I'll offer this. Play Why Georgia and pay particular attention to the acoustic guitar.  Can you hear the woody resonance sound of the body of the guitar at the same time as hearing the tone in the strings?  Can you hear bass guitar coupling with the bass drum as separate instruments or does it sound like the bass drum and bass guitar are the same.  These are the details that are lost in the age of digital.  Compression is well, compressing the music and compression is never a good thing.

So that is my explanation of the difference between a CD and vinyl.  Oh, and don't even get me started on downloads.

Here are some new records that I think are worth the money.

John Mayer - No Room For Squares (every record collection should have this for the pure dynamics)
Matt Costa - Songs We Sing
The Cars - Move Like This
Death Cab For Cutie - Codes and Keys
Stereophonic - Decade In The Sun
Beck - Guerolito
G. Love - Fixin To Die
Forever The Sickest Kids - Forever The Sickest Kids (This record will shake your house apart!)
Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What.  (of course if you are Paul Simon with limitless resources you will be able to make the best sounding vinyl.  This album is a must!)
Rufus Wainwright -  All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu
R.E.M. - Chronic Town
Force Family 5 - Dance or Die (my daughter came home from the Creation Festival with this one and while I'm not a big fan of the band itself, just not by style of music.  The record is recorded as well as any that I have heard in a long time.)

So there ya go!

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