LP Wishlist

row 1: the smiths - the queen is dead // arcade fire - the suburbs // no doubt - return to saturn
row 2: the cure - disintegration // lorde - pure heroine // arcade fire - reflektor
row 3: new order - power, corruption & lies // the smiths - meat is murder // the knife - silent shout

I've been working on filling out the rest of my record collection! Especially now that I have a record player that's not an antique that belonged to my dearly departed grandparents. It's older than my mother as she has memories of dancing on her daddy's feet while they played LPs on it. So it's something I really love & treasure & want to last forever. Which to me means playing it very seldom until I get it looked at and rewired & possibly refurbished.

Since it's a huge old wooden cabinet with wicker laced speakers nobody ever knew it was a record player when they'd come over (the reason I ended up with it is because nobody in my family even knew what it was until I lifted the top & flipped out. I remember more than a few people scoffing at my record collection (I guess in an attempt to imply I was trying to be a hipster or something because they didn't realize I actually had something to play them on??) when they would come over. I'm by no means an LP snob, I enjoy the way they sound & love the aesthetic but I mostly love that most LPs come with a complimentary download of the album! I used to lose/scratch/??? all of my CDs so this honestly seems like the most cost-effective way of having a physical copy of music I love.

But anyways, I mentioned my new record player in this blog post & it is the apple of my eye at the moment. I've become obsessed with finding any album I have any sort of emotional attachment to in LP form. The list above is a mixture of classic favorites & new loves I'm dying to buy. Now if only money were no object...





So are you an LP collector or do you stick strictly to mp3 format? Anyone out there still buying CDs?? I'm pretty sure I haven't actually bought a CD that wasn't a present for someone else in well over 7 years.

I scratch the HELL outta CDS.
-Becca

Records

For Christmas my mom & dad got me a new (portable!) record player since the one I normally use is an antique record cabinet from my late grandparents. It's really big and old so I try to be gentle with it & use it infrequently. I'm really terrified of breaking it. Eventually I want to get it tuned up & replace the speakers since I don't think it's been serviced for a long long time.

But back to my new LP player-- it is SO beautiful. The floral pattern is so bright and happy & definitely brightens any room it's sitting in. The speakers aren't amazing but I'm planning on getting a sound system for our tv anyways so I just need to find a small table for it to rest on nearby so I can plug the record player in as well. You can take the top off easily if you don't have something to lean it against & there's a locking mechanism & handle so you can take your player where-ever you may want. It also comes with a program that enables you to record your favorites LPs & convert them into mp3, which is amazing. I haven't tried that yet but I'm really excited about it!




top to bottom: Disney's 'Cinderella' Soundtrack // 'Purple Rain' by Prince & the Revolution // 'Rank' by The Smiths // 'Milk Eyed Mender' by Joanna Newsom
I bought a few new records in celebration of being able to listen to records regularly again. I was having a really awful day when I bought 'Rank' but after listening to it, I definitely feel like experiencing such a shit day was definitely worth it since I now have such a great live recording of my favorite band in my possession. I feel like I've fallen back in love with listening to music. I was without speakers for my computer for over 6 months & I hate using headphones so I basically only listened to music in my car or on my phone & let me tell you, it was sucking the life out of me.

I'm not only falling back in love with listening to music-- but also shopping for records, talking about music & listening to full albums instead of single songs. I haven't felt this excited about a piece of technology since I got my electronic diary in fourth grade haha.



You can buy this record player here.



-Becca