Spin city

The recorded music experience has been digitized and miniaturized, but somehow the idea of complete salvation in a portable white box seems suspicious. Call us Luddites, but sometimes technological "progress" only makes the past look (and sound) a whole lot better. Sure, we've gotten used to spinning our CDs in the office PC and can't set foot on the CTA without the iPod fired up and the world closed off. But when we really want to feel music in all its stereophonic (even mono) glory, we go home, pet the cat, turn on the wood-veneer hi-fi (with its welcoming green glow), pull a gem from the stacks and put the needle on the record. Uh-huh, we said record. Drink it in one face at a time, turn over, skim liner notes and repeat. Fortunately, Chicago is an analog addict's mecca. Consider the range of used, vintage and new record shops (many of them with prices that make the vinyl lifestyle the economical option)—some specializing in dance, rock, jazz and other genres—and it's an undisputed vinyl junkie heaven. For the purist, there are also shops that sell and repair fine audio components of yesteryear. Throw in some world-renowned thrift stores cycling through some of the same good stuff above and, you've got to admit, we've got it good. It's almost completely feasible to enjoy music without massaging a click wheel.

Not so long ago, I called up a lady friend and got a message. Some Johnny Cash track played in the background while she told the listener to leave a message after the tone. The message I left commented on her excellent choice of background music. When we finally spoke, she told me, "I see we're going to get along fine! I'm impressed you knew who that was. I love Johnny Cash..." I replied, "Yeah, I play my 45 of 'I Walk The Line' all the time." To which she shot back: "Your 45? Don't you have a CD player like everybody else?"

I could just write it off as one person's opinion, but this is exactly what happens when vinyl freaks like yours truly come face-to-face with The Rest Of The World—people who threw out their turntables along with their Milli Vanilli albums. Truthfully, even though I purchased a CD player long ago, I couldn't see dumping the vinyl format. I will never go back to using a typewriter—the computer has spoiled me for life. But get rid of my wax? All of it? You'd have to pry them from my cold, dead, "rekkid"-collecting hands. Bet on it.

Think vinyl is a quaint historical footnote? Does it conjure up memories of the ancient hi-fi your parents played records on when you were a kid? Or do records make you think of the hipsters wearing a fat set of headphones on their skulls as they root through the stacks at that tragically hip indie record shop you walk by but are afraid to enter—lest someone glare at you when it becomes public knowledge you don't know the difference between an original pressing and a reissue?

Never mind those misfits. Surprisingly enough, most people don't get into the game just for the sake of building a valuable, esoteric collection. The folks whose collections I most respect are the ones who fall in love with the music, keep buying what sounds good to their ears, and then one day look around and find that they've amassed a whole library. Of course, it's not always this cut-and-dried. Some buy albums solely for a good-looking cover; others buy multiple copies of the same disc simply because they can afford to do so. There are as many kinds of collectors as there are kinds of records.

And, incidentally, it's not just vintage stuff they're buying. Though it may come as a shock to a planet full of CD buyers, iTunes shoppers and MP3-file-sharing pirates, record labels still churn out vinyl for new albums by contemporary artists—albeit on a smaller scale than those albums' sibling CDs. The vinyl packaging lovingly crafted by many smaller indie labels is, like the glorious cover art on gatefolds of yesteryear, a whole lot more appealing to look at than the broken plastic jewel case your last CD arrived in, too.

How else does vinyl trump CDs? Some listeners swear the sound is fuller and richer, though it's an ongoing debate whether the human ear can truly detect a difference.The groove carved into a vinyl record mirrors the original analog sound's waveform, whereas a CD's digital recording approximates that waveform by combining pieces of the analog signal collected at the rapid rate of 44,100 per second. But think about this: If you gouge that cheap, mass-produced piece of plastic, it's history; if you scratch an album, it might skip on that one song, but you can still play the rest of the record for decades to come.

Records have been dismissed as obsolete for years now, but they're still hanging around, and they've had the last laugh. They've got a staying power unlike any other format. Remember unwieldy eight-tracks? Unraveling cassettes? And CDs may be bound for the dust bins of history, too, now that you can download MP3s, transfer them to your iPod and never have to purchase an actual physical object. Music has always been invisible, of course, but this is getting ridiculous.

Of course, if the snap, crackle, pop and hiss you sometimes get on older records bothers you, all this may be a moot point. Most vinyl purists, however, find that crackle as redolent of a simpler, more laid-back past, as they perform the ritual of lovingly removing a record from its sleeve, holding it just so, carefully cleaning it, placing it gingerly on the turntable and giving the needle its cue. And while the record spins, you can clean your marijuana on the gatefold album cover.

Excuse me for a moment while I flip it to the B-side.

I feel creepy enough just using the term collector. It's way too stuffy and antisocial, like the record geeks ogling Scarlett Johansson in the movie Ghost World.

"People have mixed feelings about it," says fortysomething Rogers Park resident John Battles of the c-word. When you get a load of the 100 square feet of records Battles has compiled, saying that he has a good handle on collecting is an understatement. "When it becomes a lifestyle, when people say you're a collector, that's cool, that's all right, but that's not where the whole thing begins and ends. It's just one thing in my life that I've always enjoyed."

Will Luck, a 26-year-old Wicker Park resident, says he got into buying records because he "wanted to hear more than what I could hear on the radio. It's been a learning experience, the whole thing. It's not just mechanical, it has soul in it."

John Ciba, another mid-20s guy who works at Choke Distributors, a local record distributor that handles a lot of indie-rock labels, says that he had already been consumed by a passion for old R&B when he first laid eyes about five years ago on the album cover for Isaac Hayes's Hot Buttered Soul. There, in living 1969 color, was the top of Hayes's bald head, close up and almost within touching distance. It was a vinyl epiphany. "I saw that cover and just knew I had to have the vinyl," says Ciba, who'd bought nothing but CDs up until then.

Before the late '80s, when vinyl became outmoded (but not entirely discontinued, thank you very much), enough regular consumers bought records to keep the format in malls, even when rickety cassettes threatened a technological takeover. But for the last 15 years or so, vinyl has been solely the province of smaller specialty stores. Chains like Virgin Megastore may dabble in it, but it's the smaller shops that keep the format going—both new and used.

Vinyl's banishment from the mainstream retail world has led to some ironic commentary. Consider one woman's exclamation a few years ago when I was purchasing a record by Detroit garage-rockers the Gories at Evanston's Dr. Wax (a vinyl and CD store): "Look, Harvey, he's buying an album! I didn't know you could still do that!"

Another woman I know has a different POV. Heather West, a 40-year-old publicist for the local punk label Victory Records, doesn't consider herself a collector, but she treasures her records all the same. "My vinyl is really random," she says, but she's stockpiled quite a few older R&B and country albums along the way. "I don't understand the concept of throwing away something that you can play and enjoy, just to go buy it again in another format. I don't really have a concept of what people from the next generation after mine think. When I started buying records, CDs hadn't been invented yet, so I don't know what kids who collect vinyl today really think. To me it's a valid format on its own."

Strangely enough, half of the vinyl customers out there were coming of age in the early '90s, right when vinyl was being phased out. Luck is a fan of '60s and '70s soul, and was born impossibly late for both vintage soul and turntables, but both eventually found their way to him in the 2000s. After he got past the obvious artists in the genre, he says, "My conversion 45 was Ruby Andrews's 'Everybody Saw You' [on the Zodiac label]. Ever since that day—and that's about three years ago—I've been interested in finding 45s and things that aren't conventional." Even more important was the look of the label itself: Once he got a load of that crazed green-and-black design with the zodiac signs, he was hooked like a Pisces. "I could just tell. You just know," Luck says. "If you're into collecting records, you look at a label and you just have a feeling about it."

And what if you're plowing through a row of anonymous 45s without wacky labels or picture sleeves for visual cues? "If I saw a group that had a name like the Majestic Gents, I figured they could sing," says Richard Murray, a 58-year-old South Side gent who started combing through Chicago warehouses and thrifts in the '60s in search of old doo-wop singles. "If I saw a record with a 'love' title like 'I'll Love You Forever' or 'No One Could Ever Take Your Place' or 'I Worship the Ground You Walk On,' I would take a chance and buy that record."

Chicago is one of the better cities for crate-diggers. The used shops are reasonably priced, and even buyers who aren't into soiling their fingers looking through old singles can find new reissues at Dusty Groove America (1120 N Ashland Ave between Haddon Ave and Thomas St, 773-342-5800). The really hard-core collectors, of course, don't like the idea of reproduced vintage vinyl (or "repros"); if the cover is a shade too shiny, or if it was printed on white cardboard (as opposed to the brown stock from the '50s and '60s), they'll pass over the $8 reissue for a $50-plus original.

"I think they're cheating themselves," Battles says. "If you happen to find the original, more power to you. If you don't, you could miss out on a lot of great things. Maybe someday that Esquerita LP on Capitol will fall down to me like manna from heaven, but I don't count on it." (That's Esquerita, as in the '50s New Orleans rock & roll singer whose look and style were ripped off by Little Richard. His sole LP, Esquerita!, a rarity worth at least $10,000, is an elusive holy grail for many collectors.)

And then there's eBay. Record collecting is, by definition, regional—collectors in different areas of the country value different genres, which affects pricing accordingly—but eBay has created an entirely new price code of its own, and its global influence has changed the rules of the game.

"If you're a collector and live in some incredibly remote area, then eBay's probably wonderful, because you can finally get stuff that you want," West says. "But it created, to me, kind of a false market, and made everything for music fans like myself a little bit harder because all the prices have suddenly gone up. Suddenly, everybody's on eBay, and then the price gets elevated, and the [local] store thinks [a record] has got some incredible value."

Luck elaborates: "I've only been collecting for three or four years, and I can tell that certain records that used to be a little cheaper are, all of a sudden, really hard to find. When you find it, it's expensive. A record that's going for $10, all of a sudden it's going for $250 because someone corners the market on that and decides to raise the price."

Ultimately, though, the science of record collecting spirals back to one simple motive: a love of music. "Stuff that moves me, stuff that brings out a positive, honest reaction in me—that's what I collect," Luck says. "Stuff that I can feel. It has to be about the music, because if it's not about the music, then I'm just a fanatic."

Before you embark on a crate-digging expedition, bone up on your vinyl lingo

acetate A recording covered with cellulose acetate—usually the pre-release copy before the record itself hits the stores
album A full-length, long-playing record with inner and outer sleeve
bootleg An unofficial or illegal record that's either a copy of a hard-to-find record or a recording of demos or live performance never intended for release by the artist
breakbeat Short sections of funky or jazzy rhythmic music that DJs prize and use in production, often found on rare groove records from the '60s
cut-outs Titles deleted from a record label's catalog and sold at a discount, often literally with a chunk of the sleeve cut out
EP Extended play. Cross between an LP and 45 wherein four to six songs fit on a 7-inch record
first pressing The original commercial production run of a recordgatefold Album package that folds open. A double gatefold contains two LPs in connected sleeves.
inner groove Just inside the playable part of the record; often has pressing information and catalog numbers scratched in
import A record that is manu-factured and issued in another country
LP Long-playing record (See "album")
mono Records with audio recorded on a single channel
picture sleeve The sleeve that a 7-inch record comes in, usually resembling a miniature album
picture disc Record with an actual photograph or artwork on it
promo (also white labels or test pressings) Pressings of records made either for promotional distribution or to test the sound before production
reissue A repackaged edition of a previously out-of-print record
repro A reissue that is identical to the original in artwork and content
RPM Revolutions per minute; the speed (33, 45 or 78 revolutions per minute) that the record is played at on the turntable
7-inch Single or EP pressed on a 7-inch vinyl disc, often called a "45" for its RPM speed (See "RPM")
sleeve (also inner sleeve and pic sleeve) The record packaging itself
12-inch Single or EP pressed on a 12-inch disc
vinyl (also wax, pieces, sides, platters or discs) Records