If I'm honest, going out was never really on the cards for tonight - not in this current phase that I'm in. Well, staying in instead, with no particular plans, and my eye fell on my old box of records, literally gathering dust under the coffee table; idly flipping through a few, I came upon Tigermilk, and it all at once reminded me of a whole bunch of things - how much I loved that album in particular (extemporanea's name is from Dorothy Parker, but the colour scheme comes direct from Tigermilk), and the way I felt about music during that time, and a whole lot of other things besides.
So I pulled out the record player from the shelf where it's been sitting, unused, since I moved into this current apartment coming up to two years ago, put on Crowded House - although I'm now on to Temple of Low Men - poured myself a glass and set up in front of the speakers and so here we are.
The turntable was a birthday gift from Sid; it may have been a 21st, which would've made it 2003 - which sounds about right. He also gave me a copy of The Unforgettable Fire - a good choice, U2 being a band that's always been there and whose music I've felt close to at more than one time in my life (another memory - my parents giving me their best of 1980-90 cd one Christmas), and that one perhaps my favourite.
It coincided with a time when I was super excited about pop music, still discovering new things all the time, and spending probably far too much (but never enough) time in second hand music stores. Dixon's on Brunswick St was a great one, and so too that one on Swanston Street (was it Collector's Corner at the time, or something else?)...most of the records I've ended up with were acquired over that final period of uni, from mid 2003 (I guess) through '04 and '05.
The Cocteau Twins were big for me then - really, absolute-favourite-artist big, and I was deeply enough in love with their music that I wanted to listen to everything they'd ever released. Thing was, they had a massive back catalogue, lps, eps and singles - some of which had never made its way onto cd. And so the record player enabled me to listen to music that was otherwise unavailable to me - specifically the wonderful "Aikea-Guinea" and "Love's Easy Tears" eps, plus The Pink Opaque compilation and the "Echoes in a Shallow Bay" ep (the latter two actually available on cd, but hard to find), and I also acquired a vinyl copy of the ever-amazing Treasure along the way too (in fact, from memory, it was bundled with the "Aikea-Guinea" ep). I really did love the Cocteaus at that time, and it was so wonderful to be able to get to these whole other swatches of their music via vinyl.
In a slightly similar vein, at some stage I picked up Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (despite the massive Cure fandom from a few years previously, I'd never got to the cd - in some, small, part because the cd omitted one of the songs from the original double-record version); also a Lush ep ("Mad Love") and the Smiths' Hatful of Hollow.
Also, a few pieces of new vinyl bought for various reasons: a Scout Niblett ep, a Tujiko Noriko 12" called "I Forgot the Title" (both of those first two weren't available on cd, I think), We Are The Pipettes, In Rainbows.
And then there was a lot of cheap second hand vinyl, and I wasn't always particularly discerning, so some of these are more random than others: Pavlov's Dog's At the Sound of the Bell, Dead or Alive's Youth Quake (I guess I bought that one because it had "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" on it, not that that's really an explanation), Kim Carnes' Mistaken Identity ("Bette Davis Eyes" - still a great song), Bread's Lost Without Your Love (??), Ry Cooder's Get Rhythm, a Shirley Bassey 25th anniversary greatest hits (this was probably because of that "History Repeating" song), a DG Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic recording of some Debussy, a cd called Spanish Classical Guitar by Juanillo de Alba, two 12" singles by the Darling Buds ("You've Got To Choose" and "Crystal Clear"), the Boomtown Rats' The Fine Art of Surfacing, Roxy Music's Manifesto (I listened to that one earlier to see whether it had gotten better with age...it hadn't), Modern English's After the Snow (a 4ad record, and home to "Melt With You"), Lloyd Cole and the Commotions' Easy Pieces, Paul Simon's Graceland (good album!), Kate and Anna McGarrigle's Love Over and Over, Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast, a 45 of the "Brass in Pocket" single...some of those I'll hang on to, but most I'll get rid of now, I think.
Amidst all that, a few do stand out. ABC's The Lexicon of Love was one - unexpectedly, I ended up really liking that one and listening to it a lot. Born in the USA - pretty sure that I came to this one through the vinyl. Also Bridge Over Troubled Water, which I don't remember really getting into at the time but which I'm certainly glad to have in my collection now.
Plus a whole lot of Talking Heads, some of which I also have on cd, some not - I guess there was a lot of their stuff second hand in stores at the time (I wonder whether the more recent surge of modern bands influenced by them has changed that): Remain in Light (1980), Speaking in Tongues (1983 - two copies ... I think at least one of them maybe had a tendency to skip or get stuck), Little Creatures (1985), True Stories (1986) and, most pleasingly, Fear of Music (1979), the first of theirs that I listened to - borrowed from the ERC library at Melbourne Uni - and still my favourite, textured corrugated cover and all.
Finally, of course, I've acquired a bunch of touchstones, mostly new and, for the older ones, generally in re-pressings...I already mentioned Treasure and Tigermilk; in addition, there's Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Isn't Anything, Loveless, OK Computer, Moon Pix, Funeral, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, Boxer. (And, to a lesser extent, Sgt Peppers, Parallel Lines and the Diva soundtrack.)
And really, it's that last batch that's most telling - all of them of course utterly, intimately familiar, inside and out via cd but I've got them on vinyl anyway in part because music sounds better that way and I wanted to be able to hear those records at their finest, and in part just because I wanted to have them on record, the physical artifact, large-size sleeve and cover (and insert) art, and the record itself, shiny black and tactile. The role that music plays in my life has shifted over time, and certainly I don't have the same intensity of feeling for it that I did back in the days when I was building this collection - but it's at no risk of going away either, and these records are a reminder and a link back to those times, and by any means completely of the past at that.
So I pulled out the record player from the shelf where it's been sitting, unused, since I moved into this current apartment coming up to two years ago, put on Crowded House - although I'm now on to Temple of Low Men - poured myself a glass and set up in front of the speakers and so here we are.
The turntable was a birthday gift from Sid; it may have been a 21st, which would've made it 2003 - which sounds about right. He also gave me a copy of The Unforgettable Fire - a good choice, U2 being a band that's always been there and whose music I've felt close to at more than one time in my life (another memory - my parents giving me their best of 1980-90 cd one Christmas), and that one perhaps my favourite.
It coincided with a time when I was super excited about pop music, still discovering new things all the time, and spending probably far too much (but never enough) time in second hand music stores. Dixon's on Brunswick St was a great one, and so too that one on Swanston Street (was it Collector's Corner at the time, or something else?)...most of the records I've ended up with were acquired over that final period of uni, from mid 2003 (I guess) through '04 and '05.
The Cocteau Twins were big for me then - really, absolute-favourite-artist big, and I was deeply enough in love with their music that I wanted to listen to everything they'd ever released. Thing was, they had a massive back catalogue, lps, eps and singles - some of which had never made its way onto cd. And so the record player enabled me to listen to music that was otherwise unavailable to me - specifically the wonderful "Aikea-Guinea" and "Love's Easy Tears" eps, plus The Pink Opaque compilation and the "Echoes in a Shallow Bay" ep (the latter two actually available on cd, but hard to find), and I also acquired a vinyl copy of the ever-amazing Treasure along the way too (in fact, from memory, it was bundled with the "Aikea-Guinea" ep). I really did love the Cocteaus at that time, and it was so wonderful to be able to get to these whole other swatches of their music via vinyl.
In a slightly similar vein, at some stage I picked up Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (despite the massive Cure fandom from a few years previously, I'd never got to the cd - in some, small, part because the cd omitted one of the songs from the original double-record version); also a Lush ep ("Mad Love") and the Smiths' Hatful of Hollow.
Also, a few pieces of new vinyl bought for various reasons: a Scout Niblett ep, a Tujiko Noriko 12" called "I Forgot the Title" (both of those first two weren't available on cd, I think), We Are The Pipettes, In Rainbows.
And then there was a lot of cheap second hand vinyl, and I wasn't always particularly discerning, so some of these are more random than others: Pavlov's Dog's At the Sound of the Bell, Dead or Alive's Youth Quake (I guess I bought that one because it had "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" on it, not that that's really an explanation), Kim Carnes' Mistaken Identity ("Bette Davis Eyes" - still a great song), Bread's Lost Without Your Love (??), Ry Cooder's Get Rhythm, a Shirley Bassey 25th anniversary greatest hits (this was probably because of that "History Repeating" song), a DG Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic recording of some Debussy, a cd called Spanish Classical Guitar by Juanillo de Alba, two 12" singles by the Darling Buds ("You've Got To Choose" and "Crystal Clear"), the Boomtown Rats' The Fine Art of Surfacing, Roxy Music's Manifesto (I listened to that one earlier to see whether it had gotten better with age...it hadn't), Modern English's After the Snow (a 4ad record, and home to "Melt With You"), Lloyd Cole and the Commotions' Easy Pieces, Paul Simon's Graceland (good album!), Kate and Anna McGarrigle's Love Over and Over, Don Henley's Building the Perfect Beast, a 45 of the "Brass in Pocket" single...some of those I'll hang on to, but most I'll get rid of now, I think.
Amidst all that, a few do stand out. ABC's The Lexicon of Love was one - unexpectedly, I ended up really liking that one and listening to it a lot. Born in the USA - pretty sure that I came to this one through the vinyl. Also Bridge Over Troubled Water, which I don't remember really getting into at the time but which I'm certainly glad to have in my collection now.
Plus a whole lot of Talking Heads, some of which I also have on cd, some not - I guess there was a lot of their stuff second hand in stores at the time (I wonder whether the more recent surge of modern bands influenced by them has changed that): Remain in Light (1980), Speaking in Tongues (1983 - two copies ... I think at least one of them maybe had a tendency to skip or get stuck), Little Creatures (1985), True Stories (1986) and, most pleasingly, Fear of Music (1979), the first of theirs that I listened to - borrowed from the ERC library at Melbourne Uni - and still my favourite, textured corrugated cover and all.
Finally, of course, I've acquired a bunch of touchstones, mostly new and, for the older ones, generally in re-pressings...I already mentioned Treasure and Tigermilk; in addition, there's Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Isn't Anything, Loveless, OK Computer, Moon Pix, Funeral, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, Boxer. (And, to a lesser extent, Sgt Peppers, Parallel Lines and the Diva soundtrack.)
And really, it's that last batch that's most telling - all of them of course utterly, intimately familiar, inside and out via cd but I've got them on vinyl anyway in part because music sounds better that way and I wanted to be able to hear those records at their finest, and in part just because I wanted to have them on record, the physical artifact, large-size sleeve and cover (and insert) art, and the record itself, shiny black and tactile. The role that music plays in my life has shifted over time, and certainly I don't have the same intensity of feeling for it that I did back in the days when I was building this collection - but it's at no risk of going away either, and these records are a reminder and a link back to those times, and by any means completely of the past at that.
