Vinyl Junkie

Vinyl has returned in my house, since the arrival of a new record player.  The spark was there a few years ago but alas the previous turntable was unable to do one fundamental task..... play records.
Faith was lost and old technology blamed.
Couple of months ago a new turntable landed which was able to play records all the way through without jumping each time Tim Burgess reached a high note.  With this came a vinyl renaissance and the destruction of the previous turntable, which was a gift i was very grateful for but ultimately deserved it's fate.....


record player from sprinch on Vimeo.

Since an already impressive collection from the early 90's the record box has swelled a bit after scouring a few record shops and charity shops and a brief splurge on ebay.

for many years I've gotten much of my music free by downloading torrents and such but the digital format never quite recreates the magic of sliding a piece of vinyl out of it's sleeve.  Listening this way I tend to take time to listen to the whole record rather than skipping through tracks on an mp3 player.  It is addictive, it starts with finding favourite singles and then gradually EP's and inevitably the harder stuff..... LP's.  It doesn't stop there either, you know you're in deep when you're going without food for special edition copy of a Happy Mondays album on yellow coloured vinyl, and breaking out in a sweat when you find an original 1978 pressing of Kaya by Bob Marley and The Wailers for a few quid in a charity shop.

vinyl junkie from sprinch on Vimeo.

RISE UP!

Went to see The Wailers at Manchester Ritz on Saturday (minus Bob obviously).  I like the Ritz as a venue anyway but the atmosphere in there was brilliant, real happy feel good vibe, everyone dancing, everyone knew all the words and even without Bob Marley The Wailers still manage to have a stage presence without seeming like a tribute band. 
Now if there's one thing that's slightly irritating at any gig nowadays it's all the phones being held up filming, there's always a few dotted about at any given time.   I do have to admit I did get my phone out and take this photo.....

.....and as you can see it's pretty rubbish.  Realising the pointless taking of a useless photo I had a cynical scathing word in my own ear and promptly turned my phone off.  My view is that why stand there filming and taking photos to look at later when you are there now??? watch it now! it's on, live, infront of you!  All these shaky videos with distorted sound and naff lifeless blurry photos that do the experience no justice whatsoever will in the vast majority of cases be of no use or interest to anyone ever.....ever, ever, including the person who took it.  In my photo for instance it clearly does not depict the night I described at the start of this post.  Do what you want but I say put your phone away, your missing everything.
Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah, The Wailers were great!  How ya feelin? Irie!

After a 2 hour funky reggae party played to an exuberantly appreciative crowd we spilled outside to cool down and went in search of beer.  Found a couple of bars, one of which we went in to satisfy a long time curiosity.  'The Temple' is an underground bar with steps leading down from an island in the middle of the road, I've walked past it plenty of times in the past and wondered what is that place?  It's small, dark, strange and most of all cool as fu6k!