Featured Essay: Life And Death At 33 1/3 RPM

by Brie Smith

My parents had a Panasonic hi-fi in the living room from as early as I can remember. I wasn’t allowed to touch it without permission, but from an incredibly early age I was fascinated with dropping the needle on a record, hearing the crackle and pop from the speakers as the turntable spun, listening to the music that came from the floor speakers.

I got my first records when I was three: a Sharon, Lois & Bram album, in recognition of my love of “The Elephant Show” after we got a satellite dish, and a vintage Superman radio drama LP that my aunt found at a yard sale. I couldn’t play them myself, but at every opportunity I would ask my mother to spin them for me.

As I got older, I started combing through my parents’ record collection; Led Zeppelin IV, the Charlie Daniels Band’s Greatest Hits, a copy of ZZ Top’s Eliminator that my mom and I gave my dad as a Christmas gift.

Christmas was always a special time for the record player in our house. We couldn’t put up the tree without my mother taking her vintage copy of Merry Christmas from Sesame Street out and listening to both sides, and if we still weren’t done, then it was time for her childhood copy of Christmas With The Chipmunks.

As I got older, though, vinyl fell by the wayside. The hi-fi just became furniture in the corner of the room as records gave way to cassettes, and then once I had my own bookshelf stereo, CDs. By high school, MP3s had started to supplant CDs, and college brought my iPod.

I didn’t come back to vinyl until my late wife bought herself a cheap Crosley all-in-one to listen to the records she’d been collecting and carting around for years; Pearl Jam imports, well-worn copies of Monkees albums and soundtracks from “Grease” and “Saturday Night Fever”, 80s records from the likes of Wham! and Duran Duran.

Before long I’d started feeling like I needed a collection of my own. A lucky find at a church tag sale added Carole King’s Tapestry and Men At Work’s Cargo to my collection, both in great condition and sounding nice.

Buying records became a way not only for me to have my favorite songs in a tangible form as streaming and satellite radio supplanted other forms of media, but also to show love to my wife. A new copy of Pet Sounds replaced one lost in a breakup before we met. A re-release of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones took over for her childhood copy, which lost its cover to her mother using it to seal up a window air conditioner.

New records joined the collection as the vinyl renaissance began to grow: an anniversary rerelease of of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, her favorite album when we met, the Car Seat Headrest masterpiece Twin Fantasy, The National’s Sleep Well Beast, a handful of The Apples In Stereo albums I jokingly tried to convince her one Christmas was actually a selection of wall calendars.

She returned the favor: a double-LP pressing of Barenaked Ladies’ Stunt” the anniversary re-release of R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, a handful of Third Man Records live recordings of Father John Misty, Parquet Courts and The Shins, Phantogram’s Ceremony.

Christmas 2021, I gave her a new pressing of a greatest-hits compilation from The Go-Go’s, a band that she had loved since childhood. After the wrapping paper was removed, she nestled it into its spot on the shelf with the other albums, waiting for the right moment to enjoy it.

Four months later, she was dead, felled by a panic attack-induced cardiac arrest at only 46. The Go-Go’s Greatest Hits still sits in its shrink wrap on the shelf, a sticker advertising its seafoam-green vinyl. It’ll probably stay that way.

Losing her was a body blow for us as a family, but it also marked a point where I decided I didn’t want to forego the things I felt like I wanted because you don’t know what tomorrow may bring.

That little Crosley all-in-one got replaced by a Sony receiver and floor speakers and an Audio-Technica turntable. Our oldest child and I started making lists of records we wanted and grabbing them when we came across them. One of the first records we added was of Montreal’s The Sunlandic Twins, followed by Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial, both favorites of hers.

Soon after came a host of records that meant a lot to me, or him, or all of us: Spoon’s Girls Can Tell; Phantogram’s Three, a personal favorite; a reprint of the Talking Heads classic Remain In Light; Welcome Interstate Managers from Fountains of Wayne, which she had introduced me to as someone who only knew “Stacy’s Mom” from the radio. A teenage love of Metallica was rekindled when I added Master of Puppets and Load to the collection, and my son now boasts a complete set of Ghost albums as well as several discs from his beloved Weezer.

Our collecting has slowed down some as time has gone on, but there are still a few albums I want to add. My love of LCD Soundsystem demands I put Sound of Silver and This Is Happening on the shelf, and if someone has an extra copy of BNL’s Gordon on wax I’ll take it, too.

Playing records has gone from being the most exciting thing in the world, to something too inconvenient and archaic, to a reminder to slow down and take a moment to enjoy the music and the experience, because you don’t know what may happen next.

The next time you want to hear your favorite song, don’t open Spotify. Take out the record, make sure it’s clean, put it on your turntable, set the needle down gently and let the experience carry you away for a few minutes, because you never know if it may be your last time.

Brie Smith is a music lover, aspiring bass player and recovering journalist living in metro Detroit. Follow her on Bluesky at briesmith.xyz.