Essays
Words from our favorite people
Three Services at the Church of In-store Play
Last summer I went record-store hopping with a musician I’d admired for more than a decade. In the car we chatted like we were instant old friends, but as soon as we got into a shop we’d split up, eventually drifting back toward the register, and comparing our hauls outside.
Maybe it’s because we’re both terminal introverts, but I think record shopping is solitary by nature, even when you’re with friends. Partly it’s physics; you can’t both look through the same bin at the same time unless you’re looking over someone’s shoulder. But I also think the rhythm of record browsing is deeply personal, maybe as individual as a fingerprint. How fast you flip through the bins, how long you pause for an artist or album you’ve never heard of before you flick past or pick it up to investigate further. With how much care do you slip a record from the sleeve, at what angle do you hold it to check for scratches? It’s intimate.
Minor Threat, Nostalgia, and Teenage Rage
I touch the record and I am sixteen again, straight-edge more or less by default, sitting in my room listening to “Seeing Red” and thinking, yeah, these guys get it.
I don’t remember where I got my copy of Minor Threat’s Complete Discography CD, but it was in heavy rotation when I was in high school. I didn’t care that they had broken up two years before I was born, the raw youthful anger was enough to make a connection regardless of time and distance. As someone who also spent my teenage years not smoking (both of my grandfathers died of smoking-related illnesses)*, drinking (I had snuck a few sips of my dad’s Stag beers and didn’t really care for it) fucking (if anyone was interested in doing that with me when I was in high school, I was utterly oblivious) or doing drugs (I wouldn’t have had the first clue where or how to get drugs, even if I had any particular interest in using them), I identified with the ideas put forth in songs like “Straight Edge”, “In My Eyes”, and “Out of Step”, even if I didn’t really feel like I had the intent necessary to consider myself straight-edge; my sober state was more one borne out of inaction than of any militancy of belief.
The Mystical Dice of Random Musical Destiny
I recently bought a new turntable. It is the first serious piece of audio equipment that I have purchased for myself in 22 years.
It is not as if I didn’t own a record player. The piece of equipment that I bought 22 years ago is, in fact, a working phonograph. But change is good and it was time for a change.
To celebrate this fun new record player, I’m going to return to enjoying regular audio adventures with my Mystical Dice of Random Musical Destiny.
Everything in its Right Place
I was thirteen when I watched Neil Young and Pearl Jam perform ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. I didn’t know it at the time, but the collaboration would eventually inform how I organized my record collection and how I thought about my favorite artists.
It was a big night. It may be shameful to admit now, but in 1993 the VMAs were the center of my calendar year. The annual awards show marked the end of summer, the start of the school year, and brought with it the promise of unpredictability and spectacle.
Their Band Saved My Life: Double Nickles on the Dime, Mental Health, and My Punk Rock Salvation
I once let a kid who had been kicked out of his house live with me and my family, and he tried to steal my underwear. Okay, that’s a lot up front, let me backup for just a second. It will be quick, and then I’ll tell you how it all led me to The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime and how D. Boon, Mike Watt, and George Hurley saved my life. Here we go: I started high school in the fall of 1993 and went through all the usual anxiety for all the same reasons everyone does at that age, like a new building, feeling like I had to prove myself again, knowing I would once again be “Jen’s little brother” (my older sister was a high school legend), and oh yeah, girls; especially girls. Girls who could drive and wouldn’t have time for me and my awkwardness, gawkiness, bad skinness, and net-negative charm…ness. I only had one thing going for me, and that’s being funny. It was my only currency, the beginning and end of assets, and it led me to hanging out with a group of older guys (meaning they were juniors and seniors) because they too were funny. I felt cooler and accepted hanging out with them. In that group was the guy who ended up needing a place to live because he got kicked out of his house. Me being the big-hearted person I was, I talked to my mom, and we took him in. What followed was six months and a lot of stuff that can be best summarized as I went from feeling like I was a part of the group and to being more like I was the annoying little brother they only hung out with out of obligation. The kid who moved in with my family clearly didn’t like me but did like having a place to live. In time it was obvious I wasn’t wanted around.
The Story of Hoodwax: A Monthly Vinyl Meetup
They say because we’re humans, we crave human connection. From social gatherings around the holidays to taking in a movie or concert with friends, our shared sense of joy is nourishment for the soul. As a capital “E” extrovert, I live this sentiment every day.
When my wife became pregnant with our son 10 years ago, we decided to sell our loft condo in Lowell, Mass., a former mill town located 30 minutes north of Boston, and move a little closer to my job. Sadly, I made the decision without thinking through the social implications of leaving a city where we had laid strong cultural roots over the course of our 8 years there.
In Defense of Sad Records: My Trip Down the Narrow Stairs
I first say “life sucks” and mean it when I’m twelve years old, in the late aughts. I’m too awkward for friends, social media is starting to expose me to the world’s biggest problems, all the adults are sad from the recession, and my own parents are fighting a long and bloody divorce. When I say it, I’m alone in my bedroom, and the silence thereafter feels like the universe agreeing with me.
Cloud Nothings - Turning On
By Trevor Zaple
Shopping for vinyl is a habit that, primarily, has you working like an old-timey prospector panning for gold in California in the middle of the 19th Century. Picture it: I’m deep in the musty innards of a vintage and antique mall in London, Ontario. Tucked away in the corner, near the washrooms, is a little nook that mostly sells old Coke signs, teacups, and commemorative plates. Hidden behind a shelf of dusty old tumblers in the corner – the very back corner of the mall – are records.