Sir, – Thanks to Aoife Barry for bringing cheer with a robust championing of vinyl records, with all their emotional, aesthetic and life-affirming associations (“A resolution for the culture lovers this year – get physical – buying records, DVDs and physical books”, Culture, January 4th).
I have never lost my love for vinyl LPs, an affair that goes back to my first ever purchase, Stormbringer by Richard and Linda Thompson. Now, with over a thousand LPs in my collection they act as stamps for my passport on a journey that began with that purchase in 1972.
They are gathered in columns in my study, witnesses to the progression of that journey, a Praetorian guard to all the associated memories in a life defined through the prism of music. Curated chronologically, the LPs act as a memory bank, an emotional trigger, a hurt locker, a comfort blanket.
Yes, as Aoife writes, they do “create an irreplaceable archive of your life”. Too much music, too many words, too many memories are disappearing into a computer cloud these days. Our future museums will have few physical artefacts as we continue the progression from tangible to vapour.
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I fear, also, what my children might do with their “inheritance” of more than 1,000 LPs. Will they also be added to the great clearing houses of the dead in charity shops on our streets, adding to the dusty collections of books, golf clubs and mothballed clothes?
There is so much more to vinyl, apart from the music. There are the colourful, creative designs of the covers, the rich biographical data in the inner sleeves and the random poetry and prose that fill the back cover.
LPs were never the most easily portable items with their awkward shape, like pizza boxes, but how they could offer street credibility in the early 1970s as I swash buckled down Grafton Street with The Incredible String Band’s LP (or usually just its cover) on full display and then with Pink Floyd for the return journey. A fistful of LPs also guaranteed easy access to the post-pub parties in Rathmines and Rathgar at the time, as everybody waited for the man with the music to arrive.
Let the LP revolution keep on spinning and vinyl go viral. – Yours, etc,
TOM McGRATH,
Wicklow.