Let’s get this out of the way before we go anywhere else. I
am not a hipster. I don’t have a beard. Beards don’t smack of style to me, they
reek of Action Man Adventurer, Geography teachers of Grange Hill, and men
trying to hide their chins. I did once
have a beard, but that was because I’d broken my ankle and couldn’t stand up to
shave. After three weeks I was very hirsute
of face. As is common to men with beards, I did not look the sine qua non of
style, I just looked rough. A cross between Cat Stevens and a particularly lazy
suicide bomber. I don’t like beards, I
don’t do beards. Like Alexander the
Great, I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to not feel the need to stick
it on my face like a circus sideshow.
Similarly, I have neither sleeve tattoo, German footwear nor
an appetite for quinoa and locally sourced meats. I am not a hipster.
What I do have is a newly acquired acquaintance with vinyl,
- the round grooved type, not the cheap, practical flooring material. Here is where I intersect with hipsters in
the Venn diagram of life.
And, I suppose, I owe those bearded,
sleeve-tattooed, craft-beer drinking wankers a debt of gratitude. While I’ve
been away for the last twenty years in the easy world of digital, the Hoxton
wankers insistence on being Bona Fide has kept the coma-ridden, semi-cadaverous
playing of records on life support. So,
twats of the world, thank you. Without
you, there would be nothing to return to, and my collection of choice platters
would be as useful as the two-hundred TDKs I buried in landfill last year.
My conversion to CD wasn’t straightforward. As a youth, I bought a lot of records. Obsessively so at times. I have All About Eve singles on five
formats. I have box sets of songs I didn’t
particularly like, but whose packaging lured me into purchase like a shiny fly
to a stupid fish. I’ve got albums I still haven’t played, but still plan to one
day*. When my peers were turning to CDs because ‘they sounded cleaner’ I stuck
to my ancient ways.
Until idleness took over.
The true advantage of CDs was that you didn’t get up halfway through to
turn them over. While this wasn’t a
problem most of the time, it was a particular burn with Pink Floyd albums, for
reasons I won’t spell out. See also Jimi
Hendrix, Late Beatles, Hawkwind, Screamadelica, Smokers’ Delight, You Lazy
Fucker, Get a Job and Stop Laying Around and Too Stoned to Move. It was a
revelation from which I did not recover for many years.
People of a certain age will remember being told that CDs
were indestructible. TV shows were riddled with demos of them being smeared
with jam, used as coasters, spat on and shat on**. The host would then wipe
down the disc of wonder, insert it into one of those VHS player sized CD
machines and –hey fucking presto – the unjammed, coffee free sounds of Dire Straits.
It was always Dire Straits, Brothering
their fucking Arms.
Yes, we were told they were indestructible. The Incredible
Hulk of the musical formats. We were lied to***.
I have hundreds of CDs, and mostly they skip like a
schoolgirl on meth. They are less useful than the proverbial chocolate teapot,
because at least a chocolate teapot can be eaten. They don’t even make particularly
good Frisbees. Shiny discs of corporate theft.
So I’ve bought a record player, I’ve resurrected my
collection, and can now be found wandering junk shops in search of hidden gems,
elbowing beardy, sandalistas out of my way. Ebay is a new danger in a way it
never has been before. Do I need This Charming Man in three different formats?
No, of course I don’t, but I’ve bought them anyway. Three versions of Atoms for
Peace? Yeah, why not.
I suspect my love of vinyl is going to kill me
financially.
Luckily, while I was still buying
vinyl in the mid-nineties, everyone was else was buying CDs. It means that all
my Oasis records are now highly sought-after, as is my Aphex Twin brown vinyl
and a variety of other things I’ll never listen to again. Ebay taketh away but
Ebay also giveth. I can flog old to
hipsters for stupid money, and buy new.
Wanna buy a copy of Me and my
Beard by the Geography Teachers, squire? First pressing – scratch n sniff
organic meats and beard oil? Yours for fifty son…
* Zodiac Mindwarp, I’m looking at you.
**Maybe not this one, lthough I could still hear traces of
faecal matter, so I’m not ruling it out.
***The motto of the 20th and 21st
Century, surely.
