Part 1 - First Bite.

First bite.

Train feels like a right place to start blogging. Railroad tracks are a bit like vinyl records. Old and solid, even nostalgic, but with fresh elements blended in. First of all, something concrete you can feel. Nothing like an electric cloud that you can’t touch.

I got back into collecting vinyl about two years ago. As 80’s teen I already had a small collection of must have records on vinyl before handy and nicely sized compact disc took over the market. As the 90’s progressed I got a nice 500+ silver disk collection, and of course still got them all. But somehow I got back into vinyl again. Can’t remember what was the main reason. It might have been my friend who was always talking about vinyl. Or maybe it was a visit to a vinyl record store nearby where I got my first Led Zeppelin vinyl.

I had saved this beautiful 70’s Dual HS-50 record player from the waste compactor a few years ago. Owner of an antique shop was just about to throw it in the compactor when I rushed to stop him. Now when I had this ”new” classic album in my hands I had a good reason to plug the machine in the socket.

Dual - HS 50

The listening experience immediately blew me away. Putting the needle on the record, looking at the album cover and listening to the album. The whole album! Imagine, I had almost forgotten how wonderful it is to listen to the whole record from top to bottom, and how important is the sequence of the tracks on each side from opening tracks through to the last songs. The whole dramatic structure. Even those overplayed hit songs merged comfortably into the natural entity of the album and the musical enjoyment gained new significance. Oh yes!

While those sweet sounds were playing, it was awesome to check out the album cover art and explore all the interesting texts and information like lyrics, song writing details, list of musicians who play on the album, producers and all the extremely important details. Wholesome experience all in all.

Even though the old-school thing was on, it was nice to have a new technology on the side! Wikipedia and Allmusic sites provide great background information when you want to know a bit more about the rotating album. Perfect.

In the future I’m going to focus on foreign rock albums from the ’60s and 70’s, but also will add some funk, soul and prog records and sometimes something else. Almost any album can surface and raise its head. In the beginning I’m gonna write about hobby of collecting vinyl, and in the future the focus will be on the music. Of course there will be a little bit of obscure details and all the fancy things that come along with collecting vinyl. In the other words; to praise all the loved treasures I have. Basically whatever comes to my mind.

Now after two years of collecting and digging the crates I had a desire to write and share this noble hobby and all the war trophies with you who are interested (blog was my wife’s idea). So, I started to write my first blog as I sit here on the train.

Led Zeppelin, s/t, remastered reissue 2014 (original pressing January 12, 1969).