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Judging by the retail environment in Columbia these days, and the prevalent attitude among the city’s music heads, vinyl is enjoying a robust comeback…

By Gary Kuhlmann

It’s a real pain in the ass. It’s large. It has to be kept clean. And it’s a chore moving it across town and into your new apartment. But it’s also a true thing of beauty for people who embrace its popularity resurgence with euphoric glee. It’s the long-playing record, the LP, vinyl. Reports of its death a decade or so ago now seem grossly exaggerated. And judging by the retail environment in Columbia these days, and the prevalent attitude among the city’s music heads, vinyl’s enjoying a robust comeback.

Proof? Walk through the doors beneath the sign of the cool cat in the Five Points vicinity of Greene Street,and find the Papa Jazz Record Shoppe, a small outpost to the world of music crammed with thousands of LPs, from $1 garden-variety copies of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours to a $300 1954 10-inch first pressing on Prestige by jazz legend Sonny Rollins. Take a short drive from there to the sign of the roadrunner at 2757 Rosewood Drive where Acme Comics & Records devotes a back corner to recent indie-rock vinyl LPs and 45s, jazz reissues, and vintage rock collectibles. Or visit Manifest Discs & Tapes, where, beneath a framed gold record of The Clash’s London Calling, a healthy chunk of the warehouse-like store boasts bountiful vinyl bins of new—as in factory shrink-wrapped—LP versions of everything from John and Yoko’s infamous Wedding Album and a red vinyl copy of the Velvet Underground’s Loaded to the latest from Sunn O))) and Dinosaur Jr.

Jonathan Steude, of Manifest, says many customers are nostalgic for the physical record and its cover and analog sound. For them, he says, there’s nothing quite like the thrill of removing the shrink wrap from a fresh copy of Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home or Love’s Forever Changes and knowing that everything, right down to the red Columbia 360 Sound label and its sans-serif white lettering or the tan Elektra label, is era-perfect, as if the whole thing jumped straight from the hands of a record-buyer four decades ago.
But Manifest’s customers aren’t just nostalgic moms and dads. Oddly, Steude says, digital-age shoppers are purchasing wax.

It may be because digital technology, while making music cheap and easy, also siphoned something away, according to Eric Woodard of Scratch n Spin, whose vinyl inventory serves mostly local and regional DJs. Beyond sound and appearance, the interaction is missing, he says. But Woodard and others are beginning to feel a vibe about the vinyl phenomenon not unlike the rise of coffeehouse culture—a community in search of a sense of community, with the record player becoming something to rally around and the LPs and 45s that corporate American tried to kill off a couple decades ago resurfacing as hipster artifacts to the youthful and cultural talismans to aging music heads. Many musicians appreciate records as art, says recording engineer Jay Matheson of The Jam Room Recording Studio. For more than 13 years, Matheson has recorded hardcore punk and rock bands who believe the LP’s aesthetic components—including large cover artwork, extras like posters and band photos, and limited editions made of colored vinyl—dwarf the plastic CD.

“There’s even a smell,” Tim Smith, co-owner of Papa Jazz, says with a knowing smile. “You can’t replicate that with a CD.”

Shortly after the compact disc debuted in 1982, pundits predicted the demise of vinyl. Most consumers readily switched to CDs and dumped their vinyl collections. But the true audiophile never abandoned the LP, according to Dave Michelson of Upstairs Audio and Video in Five Points. Any decent LP pressing covers the midrange better than a CD, he says, and so sounds warmer, and you can control the overall sound by upgrading the playback equipment. You can’t swap lasers to get a better sound from a CD player, but you might spend $3,000 on a cartridge to achieve the sound you want from an analog recording. “Vinyl has found a new niche where plenty of people are making it, buying it, and listening to it,” Matheson says. “At the same time, we can argue all day about the superiority of one format over another, but what it all comes down to is what the music industry tells us we are supposed to want.” Try this, for example (it’s available from Upstairs Audio): a wireless system that delivers flawless sound throughout your house and unblemished album cover art to your television screen. Or not.

“It depends on what you want from music,” says Papa Jazz’s Smith, who’s never downloaded a song. “Are you serious about it, or is it background for cleaning the house or going to the beach? Some people want both, and of course, many serious music geeks also buy only CDs. But for the person who’s a little more into music, the LP is the format of choice.”

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