Featured Essay: The Voice of Vinyl (Reprise)  

by Kevin Shea

One cool September night in 2008, my preschooler daughter was cavorting in the living room,  tossing stuff around when she threw her toy bear behind the television. She rummaged around back then reappeared clutching my vinyl copy of “A Different Kind Of Tension” by the  Buzzcocks. She waved it around like a Frisbee. The breath whooshed out of my lungs.  

”Daddy, what’s this?" 

I leapt from the couch, hands outstretched in a cinematic slow-motion grab to snatch the record  away before it broke. Carefully, it went back in the milk crate that was my vinyl library. We sat on the couch, me explaining records and turntables and vinyl as she listened with curiosity tinged with  confusion. She got it, though.  

I still had that crate loaded with albums because I couldn’t bring myself to let them go. What I  didn’t have was a working turntable. I (foolishly) had gotten rid of mine, thinking it was  irrelevant in an effort to save space by converting my record collection to CDs. A haphazard  stack of them rested at the far end of the console housing my disc player, tuner and cassette deck.  I jokingly referred to the console as the “hi-fi” cabinet. Glancing at the discs, I felt a faint twinge  in my heart. That tower of jewel boxes brought to mind the sheer number of vinyl albums I had  discarded, gave away, or lost in all my moves in nearly twenty years since graduating from  college. I hadn’t bothered with crate in months but nostalgia made me curious.  

Rifling through the remaining few albums, I found Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of The Moon”  beside “The Stranger” by Billy Joel. The Billy Joel album once was in frequent rotation. A rotation so heavy I eventually could sing “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” entirely from  

memory. My punk rock youth was in there, represented by Black Flag, Fear, and The Clash. The  Clash had triple representation with their self-titled first album, the double-disc “Sandinista”, and  the famed “Combat Rock”, with deeper grooves on all three from frequent replay. They were  just the tip of the audio iceberg I had embraced in my teen years.  

What else? “The Golden Age of Wireless” by Thomas Dolby. The Peter Gabriel album featuring  “Shock The Monkey”. “ChangesTwo” by David Bowie. It was a glorious flood of memories,  exalting and bittersweet. I recalled the first vinyl album I ever bought. Three dollars paid to a 

neighborhood kid named Donnie got me a worn copy of “Fly Like An Eagle” by Steve Miller  Band., which I lost sometime after high school. I thought of all the good time I had spent  listening by myself, or with friends and family. I thought of a favorite uncle, a Vietnam vet and  low-key hippie, who had good record collection. He had a loft in my maternal grandmother’s  garage where he frequently listened to them while burning incense and tinkering with  electronics. I thought of my brother, whose deep, trans-genre appreciation of music rubbed off on  me as a teenager, the seeds of which bloomed years ago then faded over time. All these  memories and emotions were a sign that the appreciation was still there. I just had no clear path  to bring it back to full life. Years later I found that path after hearing a CD version of “Stones in  My Passway” by blues great Robert Johnson. It was slightly disorienting to hear such an early  recording mastered to CDs. The technology combined the fat scratchiness of vinyl with the  machine clarity of digital audio. That chance hearing only whetted my appetite for more vinyl.  

Fast forward almost two decades later. My interest and curiosity has revived in spades due to a  chance discovery about three years ago, in an antique store around the corner from my house. I  found a pristine Harman/Kardon tuner, a vintage pair of Criterion speakers, and a Sanyo ‘Ultrx’ 

turntable. Something clicked, a switch flipped inside. I returned to the store not long after and  bought the lot. Seeing them on the console behind my desk was like reuniting with long-lost,  beloved kin.  

To be sure, I’m not sentimental about the sheer bulk that vinyl takes up. Having a turntable and  buying needles didn’t seem that cool when it was all we had. 8-tracks were a complete pain in  the ass. Cassettes weren’t much better, as anyone who has accidentally unspooled one would tell  you. Most of my collection now is on CD or digital form. Convenience at the price of soul. Vinyl  brings some of that soul back. I missed the album covers, their great art, and liner notes that read  like a book instead of resembling something from a matchbook cover. Returning home, listening  to “Combat Rock” playing on the new/old stereo, it hit hard that there really is something special  about the needle hitting the groove. You get that little bit of scratchiness, maybe a hiss and a few  pops, then BAM! Good, fat sound that warms the heart.  

My uncle passed away in 1994, but years before that he gave to me and my brother his vinyl  copy of The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. My brother and I appreciated the  music without appreciating the meaning and the love inherent in his gift. At some point the  record ended up with my brother. He had it until the day he died in summer 2009, of a heart  attack. Deep in my grief I overlooked trying to get it back. To this day, I still don’t know where it  went. I missed it more than I could say.  

Time flies, the Earth turns, records spin. In the fall of 2025 my girlfriend and I went on vacation  in upstate New York. We day-tripped around the area, into Massachusetts and Vermont, spent  time in antique stores and visiting landmarks. In Stephentown, New York, we came across a  quirky books/vintage clothes/crafts/music store, one that wasn’t open all year-round. It had been  purchased by a Scottish couple who had bought the store sight unseen, then moved to the United  States to run it. I love books, I love music, so it was a small corner of Heaven to me.  

Browsing an album bin, I found one that made me gasp. It was an early copy of “Sgt. Pepper’s  Lonely Hearts Club Band”. The cover was worn, a little scruffy, and absolutely beautiful. I slid  the record from its ragged sleeve. The vinyl looked good. No scratches, no smudges. There was a 

little sticker on the ‘A’ side label, claiming the record to be from the collection of one Robert  Ganz of Trenton, New Jersey. It may have been Mr. Ganz’s at one time, but as far as I was concerned, it belonged to me, my brother, and my uncle. There was no way I was leaving  the store without it. I wrapped it up with a little padding to keep it safe on the  drive home. My hands shook when I put the record on the turntable for the first time. I  dropped the needle, heard the hiss and those famous opening notes of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely  Hearts Club Band”. I was back in my brother’s room, my uncle’s loft, listening to songs that fell  upon my ears like leaves from a memory tree. When the the reprise version of the title track  started playing, I burst into tears. My brother and uncle were with me, their voices forever  entwined with the scratch and pop of that good fat sound.

Kevin Shea (he/him) resides happily in Savage, Maryland with his fiancee and two cats. He is a dad to an amazing daughter, a licensed architect, semi-pro photographer, aspiring writer, and avid cook.