WingsOfAnAngel
Banned
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 3
Digging in the Crates
Record collecting is part passion, part obsession and all determination
BY AMANDA FACTOR
Paul Podvalej, 23, and Morgan Tams, 21, are shopping for music. The friends and roommates are in Shorey's used clothing store in Kensington Market in Toronto, their bodies bent over milk crates as they flip through old vinyl records. Neither have any idea which album they will take home today, or where they will find it. This ain't HMV - record shopping like this is a lot like a treasure hunt. In this case, the search is unsuccessful. After about 10 minutes of flipping, Podvalej proclaims the records are "scratched bad." They leave the store and it's on with the hunt.
They file into Paradise Bound, a little record and book shop, and continue searching. Podvalej crouches in the rock/pop/alt section while Tams flips through the new arrivals and then suddenly exclaims, "Paul, check this out!" Podvalej examines Tams' find, a copy of The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request with a holographic cover, and then goes back to his flipping. "Can I listen to this?" Tams asks the clerk, holding up a record by the Savage Young Sonics. The clerk nods sleepily. With painstaking care, Tams takes the record out of the sleeve and places it on the turntable.
Podvalej and Tams grew up when cassette tapes, followed by compact discs, were the dominant medium of recorded music. Both can clearly remember when they began collecting vinyl. Podvalej was 14 when his mother gave him a record player and a box of records that she'd picked up at a garage sale for $25. "For some strange reason she thought I'd like it." When Tams was 12, he became interested in a record player owned by his friend's parents. Eventually, he kidnapped his own parents' unused turntable and commandeered their collection of Beatles and Bob Dylan LPs.
The pair has made a serious hobby out of collecting records, and now have over 250 between them. They each spend at least $20 a month at shops like Neurotica and She Said Boom! Time and financial constraints keep their hobby from becoming an obsession, though Tams admits to spending "months" looking for the British pressing of Pink Floyd's debut.
Perhaps inspired by the collections of their baby boomer parents, many twentysomethings like Tams prefer getting grimy-fingered flipping through records in a dusty little shop to buying glossy shrink-wrapped CDs in slick chain stores. Tams says this desire stems partly from the popularity of hip-hop and electronic music, in which performers artistically sample and scratch vinyl records. The 2001 documentary Scratch follows DJ Shadow obsessively "crate-digging" in the basement of a Sacramento shop.
Economics definitely plays a part. "It was a novelty at first, the fact that you could get a record for $5 while a CD was $20," says Tams. The two often scour thrift stores like Goodwill and Value Village for classic records at rock-bottom prices - like the time Podvalej found a mint-condition copy of Bob Marley's Kaya for 25 cents. "The thrift stores are the best for finds," he says. "The ones in the city get picked over pretty quickly, so it's better to go to the suburbs."
Tams likes the cover art. "On 12X12, it's like a canvas," he explains. "The artwork translates better. On CD covers it's OK, but on LP covers you get some wild stuff." On a recent trip to New York with Podvalej, he picked up the Incredible String Band's 5000 Spirits, which features a trippy cover image of a two-headed winged creature and other psychedelia awash in colour. Tams and Podvalej remember other examples, like the original Velvet Underground & Nico where you could peel off the banana, or the cover of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers that had an actual zipper.
Grey Coyote, the fortyish clerk at Paradise Bound, has amassed a collection of around 4,000 records. "They represent the golden age of recorded music," he says. Records, according to Coyote, also last longer and sound better than CDs, provided you clean and store them properly. "I've played many LPs from the '70s that to this day sound better." Podvalej agrees that vinyl recordings are truer to the original sound. "There's something about a nice clean record on a good turntable."
In terms of his customers, Coyote says he hasn't noticed too much of an increase in young people buying records. "It used to be mostly guys," he says. "There are more girls perhaps."
Scott Cramer, co-owner of Neurotica, has noticed the same trend. "In the past it was more of a guy thing," he says. "You'd have guys going through the bins while their girlfriends stood around looking bored. Now you get the opposite, a girl with a bored boyfriend."
Cramer suspects there's a good reason why young people are eschewing CDs in favour of old records. "To put it mildly, the world of music right now is quite bland," he explains. "People of that age want things that are more interesting than what is commercially available, like Britney Spears and hip-hop. So instead of buying the latest popular crap for 15 to 20 bucks, they can spend six to eight bucks on vinyl."
Cramer also notes the increase in self-made DJs playing records at Toronto's various clubs. "There's less going on in live music right now," says Cramer. "Less venues, less bands. People are more interested in spinning records than learning to play guitar."
After about 30 minutes of hunting, Podvalej and Tams bring their finds up to the cash register. Tams' copy of Donovan's What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid puts him out $8, while Podvalej's copy of Paul Simon's Graceland rings up at a mere $5.50. With their wrapped purchases tucked under their arms, they leave the cozy little shop for the bitter cold outside. Podvalej is suddenly reminded of a Dylan quote he read in a recent issue of Q magazine. "He said carrying a record is the coolest way to show you have a brain."
Record collecting is part passion, part obsession and all determination
BY AMANDA FACTOR
Paul Podvalej, 23, and Morgan Tams, 21, are shopping for music. The friends and roommates are in Shorey's used clothing store in Kensington Market in Toronto, their bodies bent over milk crates as they flip through old vinyl records. Neither have any idea which album they will take home today, or where they will find it. This ain't HMV - record shopping like this is a lot like a treasure hunt. In this case, the search is unsuccessful. After about 10 minutes of flipping, Podvalej proclaims the records are "scratched bad." They leave the store and it's on with the hunt.
They file into Paradise Bound, a little record and book shop, and continue searching. Podvalej crouches in the rock/pop/alt section while Tams flips through the new arrivals and then suddenly exclaims, "Paul, check this out!" Podvalej examines Tams' find, a copy of The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request with a holographic cover, and then goes back to his flipping. "Can I listen to this?" Tams asks the clerk, holding up a record by the Savage Young Sonics. The clerk nods sleepily. With painstaking care, Tams takes the record out of the sleeve and places it on the turntable.
Podvalej and Tams grew up when cassette tapes, followed by compact discs, were the dominant medium of recorded music. Both can clearly remember when they began collecting vinyl. Podvalej was 14 when his mother gave him a record player and a box of records that she'd picked up at a garage sale for $25. "For some strange reason she thought I'd like it." When Tams was 12, he became interested in a record player owned by his friend's parents. Eventually, he kidnapped his own parents' unused turntable and commandeered their collection of Beatles and Bob Dylan LPs.
The pair has made a serious hobby out of collecting records, and now have over 250 between them. They each spend at least $20 a month at shops like Neurotica and She Said Boom! Time and financial constraints keep their hobby from becoming an obsession, though Tams admits to spending "months" looking for the British pressing of Pink Floyd's debut.
Perhaps inspired by the collections of their baby boomer parents, many twentysomethings like Tams prefer getting grimy-fingered flipping through records in a dusty little shop to buying glossy shrink-wrapped CDs in slick chain stores. Tams says this desire stems partly from the popularity of hip-hop and electronic music, in which performers artistically sample and scratch vinyl records. The 2001 documentary Scratch follows DJ Shadow obsessively "crate-digging" in the basement of a Sacramento shop.
Economics definitely plays a part. "It was a novelty at first, the fact that you could get a record for $5 while a CD was $20," says Tams. The two often scour thrift stores like Goodwill and Value Village for classic records at rock-bottom prices - like the time Podvalej found a mint-condition copy of Bob Marley's Kaya for 25 cents. "The thrift stores are the best for finds," he says. "The ones in the city get picked over pretty quickly, so it's better to go to the suburbs."
Tams likes the cover art. "On 12X12, it's like a canvas," he explains. "The artwork translates better. On CD covers it's OK, but on LP covers you get some wild stuff." On a recent trip to New York with Podvalej, he picked up the Incredible String Band's 5000 Spirits, which features a trippy cover image of a two-headed winged creature and other psychedelia awash in colour. Tams and Podvalej remember other examples, like the original Velvet Underground & Nico where you could peel off the banana, or the cover of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers that had an actual zipper.
Grey Coyote, the fortyish clerk at Paradise Bound, has amassed a collection of around 4,000 records. "They represent the golden age of recorded music," he says. Records, according to Coyote, also last longer and sound better than CDs, provided you clean and store them properly. "I've played many LPs from the '70s that to this day sound better." Podvalej agrees that vinyl recordings are truer to the original sound. "There's something about a nice clean record on a good turntable."
In terms of his customers, Coyote says he hasn't noticed too much of an increase in young people buying records. "It used to be mostly guys," he says. "There are more girls perhaps."
Scott Cramer, co-owner of Neurotica, has noticed the same trend. "In the past it was more of a guy thing," he says. "You'd have guys going through the bins while their girlfriends stood around looking bored. Now you get the opposite, a girl with a bored boyfriend."
Cramer suspects there's a good reason why young people are eschewing CDs in favour of old records. "To put it mildly, the world of music right now is quite bland," he explains. "People of that age want things that are more interesting than what is commercially available, like Britney Spears and hip-hop. So instead of buying the latest popular crap for 15 to 20 bucks, they can spend six to eight bucks on vinyl."
Cramer also notes the increase in self-made DJs playing records at Toronto's various clubs. "There's less going on in live music right now," says Cramer. "Less venues, less bands. People are more interested in spinning records than learning to play guitar."
After about 30 minutes of hunting, Podvalej and Tams bring their finds up to the cash register. Tams' copy of Donovan's What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid puts him out $8, while Podvalej's copy of Paul Simon's Graceland rings up at a mere $5.50. With their wrapped purchases tucked under their arms, they leave the cozy little shop for the bitter cold outside. Podvalej is suddenly reminded of a Dylan quote he read in a recent issue of Q magazine. "He said carrying a record is the coolest way to show you have a brain."
