LP – This is walto.com

“People used to make records, as in a record of an event, the event of people playing music in a room.”

Do I really still need to hold onto my old vinyl LPs from the 70’s and 80’s anymore? Is there any real value in holding onto them? I never play them, although I do still have a turntable set up, with the intent that I will digitize some of the LPs onto my PC, but I’m finding even the effort to do that is better spent elsewhere, and I can just download the digital version from Amazon, or iTunes, or wherever.

There may be a couple of LPs worth saving – the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls with the original insert and the green top striped cover is somewhat rare; other albums have value in that they have not been released digitally, while others have certain sentimental value, but that hardly makes them worth keeping, especially when space is tight and getting tighter around the house.

I would imagine that, for those of us who are old enough to have been alive when vinyl LPs were the medium of delivery for new music, anyone who actually purchased vinyl LPs can remember exactly which album it was that was the very first purchase. I do.

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For a couple of years in the mid 1970’s I was a huge Elton John fan. I lived, breathed, ate and slept Elton John. I was a member of the Elton John fan club. It was in late 1974, and Elton John’s Greatest Hits had just been released, and I remember standing in the record department of the Big C in Fairless Hills, nearly ready to make my first album purchase… and when it came time to make the decision on which album I would buy, I decided on Stevie Wonder’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale, and I have never regretted that decision.

Stevie Wonder - Fulfillingness' First Finale

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I’m also pretty certain that all of us can remember our very first CD purchase; mine was in 1986, shortly after I purchased my Sony CDP-11 CD player for something like $350. Actually, I bought two CDs at the same time: Peter Gabriel’s So, and Paul Simon’s Graceland. I had already So in my collection of LPs, but the CD offered a bonus track with Laurie Anderson, This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds).

I remember the guy in the stereo store telling me how the best selling CD at the time was Primitive Love by Miami Sound Machine, because of the way the horn section on Conga sounded so great in CD clarity. I wasn’t buying it.

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Here’s where I am going with this post – as I metioned a few days ago, I’ve been listing to The Decemberists The Hazards Of Love a lot recently, and I happened to notice from their web site that they are offering a duo-gatefold vinyl LP version of this album. This gave me pause to think: what was the very last vinyl LP I bought? I’m not talking about the stuff I might have picked up in a bargain bin somewhere or at a garage sale, I’m talking about something that at the time was a new release, purchased in a record store. Something that was offered in the CD format, but I made the deliberate choice to buy the vinyl LP. I’m not really sure at all, but I took a look at my LP collection, and based upon the release dates, I’m thinking it was either Joe Jackson’s Will Power, or Go West’s Dancing On The Couch, both released in 1987. What I find interesting is that I have since purchased Fulfillingness’ First Finale on CD, and listened to it just the other day, while I do not have digital copies of Will Power or Dancing On The Couch (although I do have The King Is Dead, which I do listen to occasionally.)

I’d be curious to know of anyone else’s final vinyl LP purchase…

Tag: LP

To Purge or Not To Purge

My Very Last Vinyl Album

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