VIRTUAL MUSIC COLLECTING

Re: Steve Islip’s letter on virtual record collecting (RC 334). I am proud to be a ‘vino-saur’ if his outline is the only vision of music consumption in the future. Where would the contemporary hip-hop, reggae, dance or funk scenes be without the continued production of 7” and 12” singles? Try telling young MCs in these scenes the future of music is entirely virtual, or are these young people dinosaurs as well? I don’t quite get the sectarianism with which he is pushing his virtual agenda either, unless he has a product to sell, e.g. the software used for the creation of his preferred medium perhaps? I find MP3 players very useful when travelling, they’re hands free, easy to use in confined spaces like train seats, or just shopping at the supermarket. CDs are excellent for anthologising and compiling; just think of the great box sets that have emerged in the last 10-20 years. I don’t have anything against digital media, I embrace it. It is the narrow and blinkered view of Mr Islip that assumes RC readers do not enjoy vinyl as part of a range of options rather than in isolation. The point about vinyl/analogue is that it sounds different to digitally recorded music. I have a large collection of 60s-70s LPs and 45s (as well as 1000-plus CDs). Apart from the sound difference, these are artefacts. They are products of their time and place. I’m holding and looking at history with original vinyl. I’m not talking nostalgia either, these are documents about our shared cultural past. CD anthologies with good liner notes work in a updated way to the same end. Album art work such as Cheryl Dilcher’s beautiful gatefold LP Butterfly from 1973 (A&M) are a testament to the sleeve designer’s creative talent, which cannot be adequately replicated as a thumbnail image on a iPod screen. Likewise the Split Enz delightfully laser-etched LP True Colours, recently featured in RC, is entirely lost in virtualising it. The physicality of vinyl as a format is a key component of its attraction. One only has to glance at the Lightning Tree label profile in last months RC (p103) to see how vinyl is still an important part of contemporary music enjoyment, consumption and indeed creation. Mr Islip adopts a purely linear approach towards progress, ie vinyl replaced shellac and now virtual media replaces both vinyl and CD. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t work like that. I write 60s reissue and contemporary reviews for an online website and many titles are issued in both vinyl and digital formats. Contemporary artists often release limited edition LP versions of their latest CD or download. If it were not for vinyl junkies hunting down and making public a lot of obscure and forgotten records in the present, Mr Islip would have considerably less music to cram onto his iPod in the future. I will accept his vision as ‘one’ future of music consumption and collection. It most certainly is not the only one, thankfully.

by Paul Martin
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