It's A Whole New World, Baby :-P

So I was away over the weekend with my family in Coromandel (yeah, I know, lucky me) and on the way to the far side of the peninsula we stopped in Coromandel Town for ice cream. On the way to the ice cream shop we noticed a small little op-shop called The Bizarre so, intrigued, we wandered in. There was your usual odd selection of clothes, books, and video tapes, most of these home-made recordings of movies off TV, which were of minor interest but just as we were leaving I noticed the records. I've always been interested in vinyls, due partly to the fact that Dad's record player was stolen when I was 4 (long story), but mainly because of the massive amount of tweaking you can do to the sound and of course since they are becoming an endangered species like typewriters and TV antennae. Being at my Grandparents' bach with a record player available for the weekend seemed like too good an opportunity to miss so I bought 5. I didn't mean to buy that many but I did. However, for 50c each you can't really go wrong can you? 

The funny thing is that I'm now really interested in vinyl which I never thought I would be. I mean I assumed that I would enjoy the novelty of placing the needle in the lead-in groove and hearing that pop as it slid into place, listening to 25 or so minutes of comparably low-fi music, and carefully removing the needle before flipping the disc and repeating the process for a day or so but then it would wear off and I would be left annoyed at the hisses, clicks, and pops ruining my music but it didn't. And now I kinda like the artifacts here and there as it makes the recording sound much more natural compared to the sterilized sound of CDs. Also they just look so much better. There is no way the tiny 6 sq. in. jewel cases can match an envelope of 3 times the area for grandeur and impact of the cover art. Not even iTunes fancy cover flow comes near.

The best thing, however, is the price. Those 5 LPs cost the same amount as each CD I bought from the last op-shop I went to (that was over 6 months ago. It's not like I buy second hand music every other day!) and much less than the guy at the Napier markets who sells old CDs for $10 each. The main issue is they are tricky to rip to my computer for my iPod but with a decent turntable and Audacity anything's possible. As you can probably tell I'm quite excited about this - it's a whole new world waiting for me. Only ... I need to actually OWN a turntable first. Hello Trade Me ...