I love my records, and I'm finally getting around to them.
It started in the early 2000's with a halfway-impulse purchase of my two Technics SL-1200 MK3D turntables and a Vestax 05-Pro mixer. In order to pull it off I split the purchase across two credit cards resulting in maxing one card out.
At the time I had a hand full of music junkie friends, all of which were either saving up to buy their decks, or had already taken the plunge. We'd spend available days between classes and finals digging through the local record store crates in search of gems. Some stores had listening stations, and we'd easily grind out 4-5 hour store session auditioning hundreds of records. We'd also order records online and meet up weekend nights to drink and listen until we all passed out in front of the speakers.
Somewhere along the line people started graduating and moving away. My turntables and crates of records were boxed up and lugged from place to place as I jumped from job to job and city to city. My crates of records and boxed turntables hibernated under my bed and in my closet for years. I was very close to selling them when all of a sudden I moved into my own place, and finally had room to set everything up.
My setup must have felt like Rip Van Winkle, it had gone to sleep and unknowingly woken up in the far future. The first time I got the tables up and running I realized that every record I owned was nearly 10 years old. The kids were using laptops with their tables these days, and I didn't even own a laptop. So I picked up a used macbook and Traktor Scratch Pro in an attempt to catch up to the times. It was a blast hearing freshly downloaded songs played through the decks and mixer.
After the nostalgia of limitless tracks on my turntables wore off I shifted focus to the small collection of vinyl that I nearly parted ways with. I'm starting to slowly clean, rip, photograph, and document each disc in lossless digital format. This way I can enjoy to the collection that's quietly followed me around since the turn of the century on my phone or in the car.
Also, I've decided to make a new edition of this blog, Vinyl Saturdays. Starting tomorrow every Saturday I'll rip and post a song from my vinyl archives. The track will be the converted from analog to digital using my setup and posted for your enjoyment. I'm looking forward to sharing my re-discovery and (potential new-discovery of b-sides or whatnot) here on The End Starts Today.
