Vinyl vs. Cd's

I was asked by Shawn months and months ago to become a part of this blog and though I've been a "contributor" since about April, this is my first post. So here goes.

As a kid, we had vinyl records. I remember very vividly my father buying me my first record: Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth. I was five or six years old. The record is now proudly affixed to the wall in my bedroom, encased in glass. (Yes, I'm that sentimental about songs like "We Could Be Together" and "Lost In Your Eyes.")

Twenty-something years later, I still collect vinyl, though I think my taste has improved somewhat since 1989. My basement is ridiculously full of records, meticulously arranged in alphabetical order, and in my bedroom next to my beltless drive turntable, I keep all my favorites like Beatles 65, The Minders' Cul-de sacs and Dead Ends, and several Guided By Voices records.

As a teenager, I began buying cd's at Compact Disc World. I limited myself to buying one cd per week, as I had an allowance, and my collection slowly grew. I sort of forgot about records for a few years until my dad let us listen to his band's, Tramp, 45 from 1969, a kind of post-punk teenage angst sort of thing. And I was amazed at the quality of sound, not having heard such a thing in years.

Now the real question is WHY is vinyl so much more amazing than anything else? Well, there IS a simple scientific explanation for this: a cd's analog is digitzed. A digital recording doesn't contain all the sound information a vinyl record does. This causes vinyl to sound much better.

Aside from the scientific reasoning behind this, I think vinyl just reminds us of simpler times. I didn't have bills, car payments, or a mortgage to pay when I first received Electric Youth or listened to Thriller or Hall and Oates' Rich Girl (which was and still is a pretty damn good album.) I played outside until dark, considered skinned knees battle scars, and rode shotgun in my brothers' General Lee.