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How old are you and how did you get into vinyl?

How old are you?

  • Total voters
    332
vinyl

was given some old 7" 45's at around 10 years old...got my first vinyl spinner in 1985 aged 15..a dual cs 505/II Deluxe...then collected LP's mostly until ceedee's drove them of the shelves..decided cd wasn't for me at £13.00 a hit except for copying stuff i borrowed from the library to tape....so stuck with the black plastic and Dr. Mag-Neat O reels... until sony gave us atrac type r minidisc recorders and suddenly my record collection took on a whole new lease of life as i began to enjoy the wonders of a remote controlled music collection...
am now 35 and still listen to plastic..and for some weird reason still prefer the sound of my own vinyl to digital recordings via minidisc than any cd re-issue i've heard since...
the clicks and pops kinda grow on you after all this time... :scratch2: not to mention the fact that vinyl still sounds excellent with a good stylus and well preserved plastic....
vinyl for life... :thmbsp:
 
piece-it pete said:
The 1st lps, hmmm, I remember Bugs Bunny something or the other, Snoopys' red baron,
Click to expand...

I forgot about the Red Baron album, but I had that one also. It must've been 1969 or 70. I know I was very little. But I also remember it had Hermans Hermits'-Mrs. Brown (You've Got A Lovely Daughter) and I played it to the point of my parents insanity. Funny thing when I was younger, was that some of the older women at work used to like to test my knowledge of music from their age and one of the questions was "Hey Bryan. Who did Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter?" to which I correctly answered, much to their astonishment. "How did you know that?" and I replied, "It's funny the things you remember from when you were 3". They looked as if they could cry. I don't think they ever realized they were old enough to be my mother until that point. Now, kids do the same thing to me with bands like Queensryche, Van Halen and Skid Row, just to name a few. I'm glad I grew up in the time I did though, for many reasons, but also for the power amp age. Once again, great thread, great stories.
 
john_w said:
In case you haven't done the math by now, I'm 40. And Pete -- That's STILL Gen-X, in my book. Older Gen-X, but I think most of us had a very different attitude from the boomer generation, and the generational population had already dropped off dramatically. It was, however, kind of a transitional stage.

- jw
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John,

Tough call IMO, but interesting. I never felt like a genX'er (how do they feel? Like slackers :lmao: ?), I wore bell bottoms, bandanas and fringe suede jackets. Sure not a boomer either. I always thought Rushs' " New World Man" kinda fit.

This thread brought up a memory - me and a friend (maybe 4? 5? yrs old) blasting classical music at 78 rpm on moms' old Sears fold-down TT with the swing out speakers, using brooms as guitars in our apartment. Got spanked for that one!

Pete
 
My 1st LP was a hand-me-down from dear old mom 'n' dad,"Mood Music Sampler", which was just as bad as it sounds. A few of the selections were "Majorette" by some guy named Monte Kelly;"Safe in the Harbor" & "Harbor Lights"-an instrumental version, complete w/Hawaiian steel gee-tars. That was the record I learned you could take a stick pin, & "play" a record with-and if you pressed down REAL hard, neat little strings of black plastic would pop out of the record....but I was, what, 3 or 4...<grin>-Sandy G.
 
I'm 39 and have always considered myself a Gen X'er. I mean, the band Generation X came from our time, and produced Billy Idol. I think solidly, we were the first of Generation X. When New World Man came out (fantastic song, by the way) we were teenagers. I started a factory job in 1984 and a Baby Boomer friend of mine started calling me a Generation X'er. He is 10 years older that I and says the 'Generation Landslide' is somewhere between the time he graduated and the time I graduated, which I think I'll agree with since he was born in the mid 50s, would still qualify as a Boomer.
 
Wintersmaster said:
I'm 39 and have always considered myself a Gen X'er. I mean, the band Generation X came from our time, and produced Billy Idol. I think solidly, we were the first of Generation X. When New World Man came out (fantastic song, by the way) we were teenagers. I started a factory job in 1984 and a Baby Boomer friend of mine started calling me a Generation X'er. He is 10 years older that I and says the 'Generation Landslide' is somewhere between the time he graduated and the time I graduated, which I think I'll agree with since he was born in the mid 50s, would still qualify as a Boomer.
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WM,

I stand corrected. Hey, suddenly I've got an excuse :banana: !

Pete
 
piece-it pete said:
John,

Tough call IMO, but interesting. I never felt like a genX'er (how do they feel? Like slackers :lmao: ?), I wore bell bottoms, bandanas and fringe suede jackets. Sure not a boomer either. I always thought Rushs' " New World Man" kinda fit.

Pete
Click to expand...

I think the key to the early Gen-X attitude is the genuine lack of desire to make a "positive" impression on anybody. ("Get real" has always been kind of a slogan for us.) Thus the "slacker" rep. which is sometimes deserved, sometimes not.

Later, that turned into a general disdain for anything that looked like an attempt to appear positive. People started actually putting serious effort towards looking like slackers. (Kinda like the hippies did - how they dressed and acted went from anti-conformist to strict conformity almost overnight.) I think that's the difference between those of us hovering near 40, and younger "Xers". Of course, that's a sweeping generalization, but I think it holds true -- in general.

What's interesting in relation to this thread is that early-Xers were the "swing generation" from vinyl to CD's. We were the youngest to experiment and compare both media, and yes, for some time most of us bought the marketing hype that CD's were the ultimate source medium. Cynical and savvy as we were regarding marketing fraud, we thought this was IT. Nothing could possibly reproduce sound better than this. It took a while for us to realize we'd been suckered. (Maybe this is where we got the attitude to begin with? It's all the fault of the audio industry!)

To be fair, as I've stated before CD's still have a lot of great advantages, they're just not the panacea we thought they were.

BTW, Niel Peart (Rush) wrote several songs that I think were right on the money regarding people in our generation. New World Man was a great one. Digital Man and of course Tom Sawyer come to mind. I tend to think of Niel as one of our Tim Leary figures. Of course, that's just because I'm a total Rush head. We have other "sages", I'm sure.
 
I think that CD could have been closer to being the panacea..and it has the potential...
When i listen to my best produced CD's..mainly modern Jazz and some classical, I really dont feel that I am missing anything...y rig plays those CD's in a way that blows my mind...

CD is suffering from a dumb mad rush the indusrty had to copy their entire catalogues with not a thought involved...
 
Pete- I'm kinda like the "Rainman" when it comes to certain kinds of music. Honestly. It's kinda scary in a way. I've often wondered if I'm not a teeny bit "Asperger's Syndrome", which is a mild form of autism. I amaze & astound people all the time w/my weird "gift". I get "How do you know this stuff?" all the time. I really don't know. I'm almost as bad about automobiles, but I've been studying them for as long as I could read-at age 4.-Sandy G.
 
I was born spinning vinyl :yes: - but now I decode most of my music from my computer library. It's simply because it's simple :banana: and for the most part every bit as good as vinyl and better than tape and almost as good as optical.

I still have 2 TT's and perhaps a hundred LP's - mostly because I haven't gotten around to encoding them yet. But soon.

I also tossed all my tapes (like 100+ 7" and 10" reels and a couple of hundred cassettes) years ago although I still have my audiophile cassette deck somewhere in this mess. :sigh:

Paul
 
Paul if you ever want to sell that tape player...

let me know...I've got a blind friend that has tons of cass and he's got a broken deck...I gave him a Tascam 133..but its not working as well..

Peace, Pogue
 
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WhiteSE said:
I think that CD could have been closer to being the panacea..and it has the potential...
When i listen to my best produced CD's..mainly modern Jazz and some classical, I really dont feel that I am missing anything...y rig plays those CD's in a way that blows my mind...

CD is suffering from a dumb mad rush the indusrty had to copy their entire catalogues with not a thought involved...
Click to expand...

Of course we've beatent the CD vs Vinyl debate to death in other threads, and I don't want to gravitate any further towards it. I honestly don't know whether the best vinyl with the best turntables/tone-arms/carts will beat the best recorded discs on the best CD players, all else being equal. :dunno: Right now I don't even care. Regardless, you bring up some interesting points.

I agree that some CDs come out FAR better than others. Ironically, the band I just mentioned (Rush) is also a poster child for mediocre digital reproduction. Mercury Records seems to have just cranked all their classic stuff through the digital mill to get "passable" quality out the door. It's really too bad, given the potential of some of their recordings. I still use one or two passages on Rush discs to look for specific qualities when I audition gear, but overall it's fair at best.

I do know that the first recordings I ever bought were vinyl, and I'm sure glad I still have them!

- John
 
Like many others here, I got into vinyl because it was the only choice when I was growing up. The first record I bought was (ahem) Tommy James and The Shondells' "I Think We're Alone Now." I collected 45s for a few years, and then started buying albums when I got a job as a teenager. My first LP was the Rolling Stones "Green Grass and High Tides," a greatest hits compilation.

At one time I had about 500 LPs in my collection, but as Jerry Jeff Walker sang "A driftin' man has trouble hanging own to all he owns."

I've owned only two turntables over the years, a Technics SL-1300 i got in 1975 as partial payment for wages when the record store I worked for went out of business, and a Denon DP-45F I picked up in a pawn shop in San Antonio in 1989 or so. I now have a Technics SL-1400 on the way from Joel at http://www.theturntablefactory.com. It will probably be the last turntable I buy.

My CD collection once boasted about 1,000 unique titles, but I've downsized to about 350 after ripping them to my hard drive in iTunes. I've been buying vinyl the last few weeks because a) it is less expensive than CDs and b) I have found some titles unavailable on CD. Just this afternoon I picked up Larry Coryell & the Brubeck Brothers "Better Than Live," Charles Lloyd "Of Course" (with Gabor Szabo, Ron Carter and Tony Williams), Pat Methany's "80/81" (with Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Dewey Redman and Mike Brecker), and "The Eleventh House" featuring Larry Coryell. All for $25 including tax. Less than two new CDs.

Still looking for Jamie Brockett's "Ballad of the U.S.S. Titanic" and Jimmy Haskell's "California '99" on vinyl, or any other media.

Oh yeah, I'm 49 years old (temporarily). :D
 
At 44 yrs, I still listen mostly to vinyl and a dozen or two well recorded c.d.'s
I think my first 45rpm purchase was the Turtles "happy together"
My first LP was either the Beatles Abby Road or Revolver, I cant remember.

Somewhat funny vinyl story:
I asked for Cheech and Chong's "Big Bambu" album for my birthday (when it came out) My mother not understanding or writing down the title, went to the record store and asked for "Chech and chow big bambi" The clerk not knowing what the hell she was talking about, sold her a album and sent her on her way.
When I opened my gift, what I was sure was going to Cheech and Chong ended up being Seals and Crofts "Diamond Girl".
Talk about a let down!

RC
 
Old enough to know better, but too stupid to stop.

I was born with a copy of Walk Don't Run in hand ready to play! :thmbsp:

/d
 
john_w said:
Of course we've beatent the CD vs Vinyl debate to death in other threads, and I don't want to gravitate any further towards it. I honestly don't know whether the best vinyl with the best turntables/tone-arms/carts will beat the best recorded discs on the best CD players, all else being equal. :dunno: Right now I don't even care. Regardless, you bring up some interesting points.

I agree that some CDs come out FAR better than others. Ironically, the band I just mentioned (Rush) is also a poster child for mediocre digital reproduction. Mercury Records seems to have just cranked all their classic stuff through the digital mill to get "passable" quality out the door. It's really too bad, given the potential of some of their recordings. I still use one or two passages on Rush discs to look for specific qualities when I audition gear, but overall it's fair at best.

I do know that the first recordings I ever bought were vinyl, and I'm sure glad I still have them!

- John
Click to expand...

John,
I couldn't have put it better myself. I just bought Signals on lp at a used record store and now it pains me to listen to a Rush cd. Besides that though, some recordings were just meant to be played on vinyl. I think The Cars debut album is another great example of that. I have a hard time keeping interest in the Stones, which have been my favorite group for 26 years now, unless I hear them on vinyl. Maybe the sound difference is minimal in some cases, but the routine adds to the experience. I'm just now, after 15 years, rebuilding my record collection. Not bad at a buck a piece in an antique shop.
 
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