Featured Essay: The Day I Fell for a Skipping Record

by Peter Mwaniki

The first record I had was not new. It wasn’t even mine at first. It was bequeathed to me: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the type of album that all relatives of everyone used to play in their living room when they were younger. The sleeve was tattered; the cover was worn at the edges and the vinyl had more scratches than lights.

And it skipped.

Not an all-out, get-it-off-the-record jump, but merely enough to cause one of the tracks to stumble each and every time. The needle snagged, inhaled dust, and was even blown on, as if it were a vintage Nintendo game. Nothing worked. That skip was not going anywhere.

Strangely enough, thereafter, I became accustomed to it. I began to love it, more than that. My version of the song was to hiccup that little. While listening to their perfect versions of Rumors, I would sing the song’s lines incorrectly and wait for a moment without any pauses. When the music continued flowing along in a mannered way, I would become confused. In my situation, the imperfection became a defining characteristic.

I believe it was the point where I knew that the record was not a duplicate of a famous album. It was mine.

I still recall the entire ceremony. I took the disc out of the damaged sleeve and caught the faint scent of cardboard and dust. As I looked at the grooves in the light, they appeared scratched like a road map of another person’s life. Slowly lowering the needle onto the record, I heard that satisfying pop and crackle. Then, as usual, with a cracking voice and a faltering, Stevie would rejoin, like a mantra, that this copy too had its own personality.

The next time I began to purchase records for myself, I reasoned that I would substitute them. I wanted a clean copy of Rumours, one that played as it was intended. So, I bought one. Brand new. Dropped the needle. Listened. And… sure, it was perfect. The songs sparkled. But something felt missing. It did not sound like my album anymore without the skip. It was as though you were meeting a friend who suddenly started talking without their usual quirks; it was the same person, but in a way that felt unfamiliar.

That was the moment I realized I was more than just falling in love with music. The records were falling in love with me because of the stories they told. Each fingerprint, each sticker, each fold of the corner, had something to say. A record in excellent shape could be on the shelf, but a poor record might also be there. That felt alive.

From then on, record stores turned into treasure hunts. I would roll through heaps of crates and flick over and over the glitzy reissues to find the ones with personality. The inner sleeve contained a note written. A faint smell of cigarettes. Side B had a scratch in its middle that suggested something was there. These were not records but diaries, handed over from hearer to hearer.

Even years later, that scratched copy of Rumours still occupies a special place in my collection. I have taken home some of the rarities of pressings, colored records, and box sets – the entire collector’s dream. But not one of them did any better than I began with. I draw it out every now and then and drop the needle and wait. And as the skip comes by, I smile. I am conscious that I am immersing myself in a unique experience that no one else in the world has ever encountered.

It is a Japanese term, ‘wabi-sabi’, which means that there is beauty in imperfection. I initially listened to the record prior to learning the term, but I understood the sensation it evoked. It was no mistake, that skip; it was a fingerprint. A scar. Note that even imperfections can make something memorable.

Music, as well as life, does not always play well. Occasionally it stutters. Occasionally it repeats. Occasionally it gets stuck. However, those are easy to remember – those that make you laugh, shake your head, or sing a lyric incorrectly.

I certainly will never have that record. It’s not that I can’t; it’s simply that I don’t want to. Perfection is overrated. Give me the skips, scratches, and quirks. They’re the heartbeats of vinyl, and that was the reason I fell in love with collecting in the first place.

Peter Mwaniki is a Kenyan writer and storyteller who is a believer in the value of memory and music in making us who we are. He got into writing based on little personal thoughts that slowly evolved into a means of reflecting the emotions and experiences that one is likely to overlook in their day-to-day life. He is inspired by nostalgia, culture, and the sensory details that make ordinary moments come to life on the page. He finds time when he is not writing listening to records, discovering the history of music and discovering stories in the places and people around him. In his work, he would like to offer some parts of himself to admire the universal in the personal.