Mark it down – I’m pointing you all towards something from The Plain Dealer that is not authored by John Soeder.
That’s right folks, it happens on rare occasion.
Speaking of that, one of these days, I’m going to ask John if “Soeder” is pronounced in such a way that rhymes with Loder….as in Kurt Loder.
I thought Kurt Loder was cool when I was growing up. There, I said it – revealing quite possibly the most shameful embarrassing thing about myself that I will ever share here.
Actually, that’s probably not true.
But back to Loder – in some of the smaller towns I lived in before coming to Cleveland in 1989, Kurt Loder was a glowing beacon of rock and roll information that was otherwise absent from my dark and depressing (I just wanted to put that) world.
I had the MTV “Week in Rock” theme music memorized, and waited for the periodic “MTV News” updates from Loder, and all of this was still KIND OF surrounded by music videos.
Now, as I was searching on Youtube, I was shocked to find out that Loder debuted with MTV in 1988. It seemed to me like he was with the network much earlier than that. And it throws off the whole timeline of my “dark and depressing” pre-Cleveland existence (again, just kidding!)
So who was I looking up to pre-Loder?
Nah.
Anyway, for what it’s worth – I always hated John Norris.
Back to vinyl:
I hope that you all have been sitting at home today, staring deep into your vinyl collection, playing lots of vinyl, and celebrating National Vinyl Record Day.
Since that probably didn’t happen, let me point you towards a couple of pieces of good reading:
The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s one and only newspaper, had an article in Sunday’s edition taking note (long overdue, I say!) that vinyl records are becoming popular again.
Vinyl records are like fruits and vegetables, insists Saul Moss.
“When they’re in season, you’ve got to have it, and when they’re not, you get rid of them,” said Moss, owner of Cleveland’s Downtown Records & Tapes, which sells new records of current and oldies styles.
Seduced by compact discs and byte-sized digital formats, music fans found the 1980s and ’90s the ripe time to abandon the classic audio format. Record-store owners everywhere feared for the future of vinyl.
My Virgin Festival compadre Adam is actually quoted in the article at the very, very end, so there’s your official Addicted to Vinyl connecting point to the article….because we practice that “full disclosure” stuff here.
Also, the Popdose guys have a whole day’s worth of posts celebrating National Vinyl Record Day.
This one from Jon Cummings, caught my eye in particular:
5 ways to trash a precious platter
When the compact disc was introduced in the mid-’80s, one of its main selling points (along with allegedly superior digital sound) was its durability. Vinyl records, we all knew, could be scratched, warped, chipped, broken in half; CDs, on the other hand, were forever.
Nevertheless, I found something sad about the shift from vinyl to metal, in a purely tactile sense. Sure, records required careful handling, upright storage and frequent cleaning, and could be ruined by a slip of the hand or the poorly executed scrape of a needle – but to me that made them precious. Getting a record from sleeve to turntable was an intricate maneuver, if you were doing it right – kind of like pinning a corsage on your prom date: One screw-up, and somebody was gonna get hurt.
Read the rest here.
P.S. – don’t forget about the current Addicted to Vinyl giveaway – your chance to win a great collection of vinyl from Concord Music Group!
Spin the black circle!