Music

Surprisingly, I recently sought out and purchased a vinyl record turntable. This is a surprise to me because I've spent the last three decades moving from the opposite direction as my music collection evolved from vinyl and cassette tape to compact discs and then finally to digital music stored as MP3 files on my computer and mobile devices. In this century, I don't even know if you can call it collecting music because I now subscribe monthly to an endless library of artists and songs through various music streaming services.

I'm a mid-aged man living in the future where vinyl records are in our past; so I thought. Yet, here I am. I'm looking at turntables and relearning all over again the importance of a preamps and amplifiers when connecting the turntable to a set of speakers. What happened?

My wife and son are struggling with my recent obsession for turntables and vinyl records. I’m slightly confused of their surprise yet I understand. They never knew me back in the old days.

They didn’t know that optimistic teenager that spent hours listening to LPs and spending additional time recording them on cassette tape for my Sony Walkman. They didn’t know that me in college while living in a Kansas University dorm where every room on 6th Floor in Ellsworth Hall had the volume on their stereo set to Level 11.

The Ramones, Beatles, Grateful Dead, Journey, Kansas, Rush, Johnny Cash, Guns n Roses, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Pink Floyd. They knew me back then and that’s good enough for me.

Modified slightly in 2023 for a repost on Medium.