Community Update

Ji--John Konrad from Johnnys Records signing in. We've been selling records and CDs from our shop on Tokeneke Road in Darien since 1975. That sounds like a long, long time, especially considering that when I opened my store I told my landlord I expected to be in business for maybe a year or so. I was twenty-five at the time and a year's commitment was about as much as I could handle.
 Strangely, then as now, vinyl was/is the major medium for music. Yes, you read me right, vinyl is the main format for music today. Do I mean those bulky, antiquated items stored in your attics and basements or placed at your curb on garbage day. Yup, that would be the things I'm talking about.
  Vinyl is back in a big way. Nosed out by the seemingly more convenient CD format in the late nineteen eighties, lost beneath the madness that was the download craze of the late nineties and the first decade  of the twenty-first century, sometime around 2006 vinyl began to re-emerge as the way music is best experienced.
  Perhaps it's that people, or at least some of us, are born collectors. Maybe there's a genetic disposition for gathering. Or maybe the virtual experience in which substance-less consumption leaves you with a strange vacuous hangover, a feeling of having over-indulged without any empties to put truth to the pain, has left people evaluating the digital age.
  My bet is that records simple sound the best. If you like listening, you'll like the way music sounds as delivered by a stylus traveling through a groove. Truth is, despite our digital aspirations, we were born analogue creatures. Our ears respond best to the vinyl vibe.
  Now I don't expect you to take my word for this. Over the past five years it's almost a daily experience that someone will enter my store, see all the vinyl in the racks (and the mounds of used vinyl on the floor) shake his or her head, and address me as if I'm living in a delusional world.
  "Does anyone still listen to records?"
  This is delivered more as a statement than a question. In response I smile and nod yes.
  "Vinyl is the only part of the record industry that's still growing," I say.
  "You mean records are still being made?"
  "Indeed, any artist who is up on things puts his music on vinyl. It's what people are buying"
  "Kids? The kids are buying vinyl?"
  "Not just kids; although that's in large part how the revival started. Teenagers messing with their parents turntables and getting excited by the record playing experience is how we got going. But over the last few years record listening has snowballed and the demographic has grown to include every age."
  "But why? Why is this happening?"
  "I don't know. CDs and downloads are mandatory and convenient. People in motion feed themselves with devices. It eases the boredom. But when you're in your private space and want first class entertainment, vinyl is the right thing. Records are fun. They are meant to appeal to a body at rest that needs soothing."
  I can't say this conversation leads to anything like a instant conversion of the skeptic with whom I'm engaging. But I can honestly report that a large number of the folk who leave sha
king their heads return in a few months and ask me where they might purchase a turn table.
  Now this doesn't mean  we're not still selling CDs. In fact, on most days we still sell a few more CDs than records. But this is an equation that's in flux and rapidly moving in the direction of vinyl sales.
  I like the convenience of CDs. I like the convenience of downloads. But neither of these experiences has an aesthetic. In my zumba classes the instructors all use ipods to play the music. Its works. It's simple. The speakers in the zumba room are big and the dancing is fun. But the first time I heard one of these zumba songs played on a record, I was flabbergasted by the difference in sound. There was so much more going on than I had ever heard before. The music was so much brighter. The sound embraced my body and fed my cells. Does this mean I'm going to ask my zumba teachers to use records from now on. No. It wouldn't be practical for them to be transporting a suitcase of vinyl to and from the gym. It would take too long between numbers to cue up a song. For what we're doing, the download works fine. But if I'm at home relaxing, or having a party, there's  no sound that's better than that coming from vinyl.
  I'll; be checking in on this blog every week or so. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do. I'll post what CDs and LPs have come out recently and what I recommend. I might report on music. I might tell stories like I once did for a Darien newspaper. I'll try to keep you amused and informed--John from Johnnys