VINYL

Truth: Vinyl is what records are made of. Yes, records. Records records records. And when you buy a record, you need to play it on a record player. Are records and record players expensive? Yes. Is this an outdated piece of technology? Yes. Is playing a record annoying because you have to flip it over every forty minutes? Absolutely. Is this Hip? Fuck yeah.

Hearsay: I actually own a record player myself and can boast of a pretty impressive selection of records...which I will now unashamedly do. Ahem. I have at least four Cat Stevens albums, three Simon & Garfunkel albums, two Pink Floyd albums, and Led Zepplin’s In Through the Out Door. I also happen to own an original copy of Revolver and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Plus! I have plenty of instrumental (including Holst’s The Planets and the lovely George Winston’s Autumn), not to mention movie soundtracks (The Graduate and The Sting, for starters). Now. Ask me how often I ever listen to these marvelously artsy musics. Just ask me. Yep, that’s right – almost never.

BS and Speculation: The truth is, vinyl only makes sense to people who really know music. Seriously. Ask somebody out at Rhino Records (I heart Claremont) or down at Rockaway (in the indie mecca of Silver Lake) about vinyl and they will talk your ear off about why it kicks ass. Which it does. But for the average cat like me? Yeah, I can’t tell the difference. The reason I have a vinyl collection, as you can probably tell from my above list, is because the music I have on vinyl I actually don’t own in any other form. If I want to hear Holst while I’m cooking my Hip pseudo-vegan food, I really have to put it on the record player. I can’t just plug in my iPod. Hell, my iPod is dead half the time anyway. Which brings me to perhaps the absolute best reason to ever EVER listen to vinyl – you never have to charge it. And laziness, my friends, laziness is Hip. Excuse me while I go lie down.