If you were to ask a college student what they want right at this very moment, what responses would you hear? An iPod is very likely. A working car, possibly. Most, if not all, might just give the standard response: “money.” What’s my number one? A record player.
When I asked for a record player for Christmas, my parents looked at me like I was insane. All they kept saying to me was, why? Their utter confusion didn’t’stop me from begging and in the end I got what I wanted. I am now in possession of a beautiful record player and several records, with many more on the way.
As I skimmed these words, getting ready to embark on my magical musical journey of buying my first record (Led Zeppelin IV, by the way) this awesome feeling came over me. It felt so different from buying a CD or a song off iTunes. While the music I was purchasing would never go onto my MP3 player or computer to add to my long list of music that is about 50 percent legal, I really did not care. There is something very surreal about picking up a record from a favorite band and thinking, this is what how people years ago were listening to their favorite bands when they were my age.
The journey has been a rough one, and probably won’t get much easier, because record stores are hard to come by nowadays. Why? It’s simple. No one wants to buy records anymore. They want their 80GB iPod that is permanently attached to their skull. Of the people that actually do own records, most of the time they keep them tucked away in the garage in a box labeled “Stoner Days” that has not been opened in years. This can make a music lover like myself cry.
When some of the most ingenious musicians in history came knocking at our doors, attempting to get themselves heard, they didn’t have iTunes or any sort of fancy technology to sell their music. Buying records is a way to connect with these glorious people on a completely different level.
Sure, we have our surround sound and $300 Apple headphones, but this is not about great sound or a crisp, clean listening experience. Listening to records, while being slightly scratchy and/or bumpy, pays tribute to these amazingly talented individuals we love so much.
The next time you happen to stumble into your parents’ attic, dust off some of their Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole albums. If they were hippies, Grateful Dead. If they claim to be have been rockers, there’s no way they’d be without The Clash or Sex Pistols.
Open your minds and eyes to an entirely different manner to escape into the wonderful world known as music. The musicians you give a chance to might even smile down on yet another young soul who has put aside the present and taken a peak into the past.
Krystle Ralston is a senior journalism major and news editor of the Daily Forty-Niner.
