From Friday’s New York Times:
Saturday is Record Store Day, presented by a consortium of independent stores and trade
groups, with hundreds of retailers in the United States and some overseas cranking up the
volume a bit to draw back customers and to celebrate the culture of buying, selling and
debating CDs and vinyl.
The experience of going to a record store and finding a long-sought-after album is far superior to any online purchasing experience. A store is full of thousands of new and used records and CDs, and you are free to walk the aisles and thumb through the merchandise. You’ll find yourself flitting around from one area to another as each item you look at reminds you of something else that you might want. And while you are there, you’ll be listening to whatever the employees have decided to play at that time. You may have never heard it before and you may not like it, or you may love it and buy it immediately. Happens to me all the time…
But then I buy a lot of CD’s. I don’t even own an iPod and people frequently ask me why. The answer is simple. Bitrate. There is a graphic in this New York Times article that illustrates how much music is lost when a CD wave file is compressed into an MP3 file. You’ll see that MP3’s are missing a substantial portion of the music and, if you listen carefully, the difference is audible. My ears detect an overall loss of depth to the sound, a lack of solid bass notes, and a lack of clarity in sounds from brassy instruments.
So treat your ears today by going to your local independently owned record store and buy some great sounding CDs, or LPs if you still own one of those turntables…
If you are in Seattle, go to Sonic Boom records in Ballard and Capitol Hill. They have a full schedule of Record Store Day events planned. And also go to Easy Street Records in Queen Anne and West Seattle.
Wondering what to buy? May I suggest:
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Digg!!!
The Duke Spirit - Neptune
Jim White - Transnormal Skiperoo
DevotchKa! - A Mad and Faithful Telling
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club - Cipher
R.E.M. - Accelerate
Cory says buy The Kills - Midnight Boom
Zippy says you need to buy the new Sons and Daughters album, This Gift - and if you don’t buy Left for Dead by Wussy, you’re a pussy.
Gorby says buy The Jam, Wayne “The Train” Hancock and Hank III.
Now get on down to your record store and support your local proprietor and your favorite artists.
I’ll start with 3 qualifying statments:
1) Zippy is not used to posting at anytime other than 12 to 3:30 am and at anything less than a .2 blood alc level so he is a little concerned someone actully reads this blog for anything other than the pictures.
2) Zippy loves buying records (by this I mean CD’s, Vinyl, 8-track, whatever)
3) Zippy only writes his responses in stream-of-thought with no editing and I’m finding that at anything less than a .2 at 2am I don’t stream well - must be an enlarged pituitary
That said, Zippy loves having 8,000 songs available at all times on his car iPod (and my car has an excellent sound system - for a car - but it eats up at least half of the sonic fidelity you refer to - your computer speakers eat up all of it bro) as well as an ongoing random mix of Ms. Zippy’s best of 2005, 2006, and 20007 for his daily elliptical machine sweat-fest on his cute lil iPod mini.
I buy cd’s (mostly at fabulous stores like Sonic Boom) but I am happy to have an excellent technology like MP3 players so that they are with me at the beach for my chemically enhanced pleasure (there is still a lot to hear in Jane Addiction’s mix on an MP3 - ask Jonny O). And I like to be able to buy one song when needed off the internet at any instant to fill out the perfect mix (remember those mix tapes you used to make? the ones with poorer sound fidelity than an MP3 with constant hisssing? - they rocked!).
Thanks for the Son’s and Daughters and Wussy promo. We need Wussy in our town people! Demand the Wussy!!!! We asked ‘em - all they need is the $$$ to get here.