my vinyl romance

I love collecting music. My CD collection is teetering around 500, and I’ve got a nice pile of cassettes and LPs that I can be (mostly) proud of. One of the things I learned early is that if you deal in volume, you need to try to buy your music as cheap as you can. That in mind, I got into used music early and bought so much at the Blacksburg Record Exchange store in college that they started setting stuff aside for me.

LPs are the most fun to collect in my opinion, because they’re quirky, nostalgic and nothing matches their sound. You can make music clear as a bell with digital technology, but for sheer warmth and presence, you can’t beat a slightly crackly LP turning at 33 rpm.

Even if the music doesn’t scream classic, LP packaging is a distinct and fun class of product design. It’s fascinating what designers did with these 12x12 canvasses, and regardless of musical genre, the covers offered a telling description of that day’s culture.

I went to the Roanoke Record Exchange and hit a motherlode of LPs for only $1.00 apiece. I got excited and bought 20!

Along with my bargain basement finds I grabbed a couple of slightly more expensive LP classics: Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones (complete with the unusual zippered album cover) and Two B’s Please by The Robbin Thompson Band, a surprisingly solid 1980 release from the Richmond-based rockers.

What else did I get, you ask:

Al Jarreau, Jarreau
Al Jarreau, Breaking Away
Aretha Franklin, Aretha
Carly Simon, Boys in the Trees
Chick Corea, The Leprechaun
Daryl Hall & John Oates, Voices
Electric Light Orchestra, Discovery
George Benson, Livin’ Inside Your Love
George Bensson, 20/20
Gino Vannelli, Nightwalker
Heart, Dreamboat Annie
Jerry Clower, Mouth of Mississippi
Pete Townshend, Chinese Eyes
PM Dawn, Paper Doll (12” single)
Rick Astley, Whenever You Need Somebody (still factory sealed!)
Smokey Robinson, Being With You
Smokey Robinson, One Heartbeat
Steely Dan, Gaucho
The Doobie Brothers, Minute by Minute
Walt Disney, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day