It Spins

When I was thirteen years old my uncle taught me how to slowly lower the arm of a record player onto the vinyl record without scratching it. Vinyl records….a very delicate thing. This concept was quite figurative in comparison to threading a sewing machine while it is running. 

The needle itself that scratched out the audio and transferred it to the speakers was made of nylon I believe and would dull over time. If you didn’t replace it regularly it would widen the grooves in the vinyl disc causing them to sound bad. The alternative though was to buy needles made of graphite commonly called diamond tips. These eventually had to be replaced too but not as often and they didn’t dull, they would just snap over time. 

When compact discs (or, laser discs) came along we were led to believe that they were virtually indestructible. This was not true. They were compact but, just as delicate as a vinyl record. Through the transition of this genre there was a lot of skepticism throughout society as to which was preferred. I personally preferred vinyl over compact discs and Duff Makagan of Gun-n-Roses made the comment that really spoke to my heart as to how I felt about this matter. “When you set that needle down on a vinyl record and you can here that popping and cracking sound right before the music started playing, then you knew you had something. 

I did, however, make the transition from vinyl to compact discs and then to digital down loads but I do miss vinyl and it is still available. My dream sound system though that lurks in the shadows of my desires is not much different than that of my younger years. A quad speaker system the bigger the better, with surround sound in between, with a ramped up amplifier. I would forgo what has become the mythical receiver system for a Bluetooth receiver, quite small and compact that I can hook my phone to where I store a virtually unlimited amount of music. 

Salutation pending 

Johnny R Draper