It all comes down to those eyes.
It was a raw September afternoon in York as Covid-19 restrictions began to ease. Scouting for a warm coffee shop my attention was drawn to a familiar face in the Shambles Market. And there she was, in the front of a jam packed cardboard box of vinyl records calling to me across the years, her impossibly big brown eyes pinning me momentarily to the spot.
But first, a short history lesson.
As a proud baby boomer born in the early fifties, my music buying activity began with “singles” (45rpm), followed in my late teens with “long playing” vinyl (33rpm) records. With the advances in technology over the next thirty years, I “progressed”, like many of my contemporaries, to cassette tapes, courtesy of the then revolutionary Sony Walkman, and then compact discs (CDs).
The bulk of my vinyl collection (did we refer to it as “vinyl” then?) was voraciously snaffled up by predatory dealers lurking at boot fairs on Sunday mornings. Selling a box full of classic sixties and seventies albums was as much a thrill for me (in retrospect, a short-sighted one) as it was to the wily buyer.
A single box, containing an eclectic range of rock, folk and classical titles, remained, consigned to a succession of lofts as we moved home three times. The only purchases I made for the next twenty years were CDs, and the turntable gathered dust before being discarded altogether.
I had succumbed to the prevailing mantra that CDs offered a cleaner, more precise and, therefore, satisfying, sound. Even the vinyl comeback in the early years of the new millennium failed to convince me to abandon this approach.
The reason was primarily a matter of cost. I was not in a position to pay £30 for a new 180g pressing of an album I had bought fifty years previously for thirty shillings (£1.50!). And then there was the outlay that would be required on a new turntable to consider.
But as vinyl collection became increasingly fashionable again, I found myself pawing through boxes in the growing number of independent record shops and market stalls, joining in the arcane and, to some tastes, boring, conversations among boomers like myself that accompanied the pursuit.
But the likelihood of my leaving with an LP under my arm remained a slim one.
Until our eyes met as dusk descended over the Shambles Market.
I think it’s time I revealed the identity of the person whose eyes so transfixed me and drove me to a fateful decision.
None other than Linda Ronstadt, not only the most beautiful, but also the most versatile (country rock, Hispanic ballads, American standards, opera, the list goes on) singer of her generation. I was unable to resist buying her eponymous album (readers lacking a soul might suggest that I would have been better just cutting up the outer sleeve and framing it).
It still took a lengthy sermon from the guy manning the stall in the market to cement my conversion. Jackson Browne’s For Everyman and Van Morrison’s Hard Nose the Highway , each at an affordable price, sealed the deal. Within a week I had introduced them to a new, attractive yet moderately priced turntable.
And then the fun started……with a twist.
Cost continued to be a major factor in my purchasing strategy. But there was an even more important criterion – I would not, with occasional exceptions, buy an album that post dated the time I had previously stopped collecting vinyl.
To date, I have bought a little over a hundred albums in the four years since my Yorkshire epiphany, some “new” but the majority second hand from independent stores, fairs and market stalls, online retailers and charity shops, ranging in price from £1.99 to £35, most in the lower price range. I have rejected others if they looked as if they were damaged. Very few have disappointed.
I have striven to resist becoming a vinyl bore but there is no question in my mind that it has a warmth and spirit that is largely absent from the more clinical, “perfect” alternatives. Some surface noise only adds to the enhanced atmosphere.
And I have overcome my propensity to whinge whenever I have to get up every twenty minutes to turn the disc over!
Tony Quarrington 