I suppose one of the great things about vinyl records is that they never let you down. Sure, they could get scratched and damaged, but treated right they'd always deliver a little slice of heaven on demand year after year. Of course, portable in themselves, the equipment required for them to perform was not so. They were not quite car friendly, and for that reason I will never decry the cd or cassette tape. A mate of mine did however acquire a battery operated record player and rushed to my house to demonstrate it. We sunbathed on the lawn listening to side one of Let It Bleed. We never got to side two as, stirring from our ease to investigate the slightly underwhelming sounds towards the end of the title track,we discovered that the full force of the sun had rendered this particular piece of vinyl a sort of replica of a fairground Waltzer. I don't know anyone who's successfully brought back to life a badly warped record with a warm iron and tea towels but that's what we tried.
And another thing - The vinyl record, what a design classic ! What a thing to behold in action ! It's like close up magic. I can see all the movements, I sort of get it's about a groove, a needle, and a vibration but I still can't see how it's done. There's no way it should work, no way it should deliver up such magic (mind you I speak as a man who still wonder at how marvellous it is to be able to call up someone a few streets away let alone on the other side of the world). And stereo - what's all that about then? I never really "got" stereo. My uncle had the most fabulous equipment through which he seemed to play nothing but those stereo demonstration discs (what were they called?), and sound effects records. For me, even now, it just has to be loud enough.
When you first started buying vinyl records if you did it as a youngster chances are it was always much more a voyage of discovery back then than it is now - now that we are much more well read in all these things. We probably stared at the labels and, in particular, the LP covers taking in every detail, understood and misunderstood, just sort of looking for clues; telling ourselves stories, imagining ourselves in the band, looking for some sort of sense in the printed lyrics, wondering what ffrr (full frequency range recording?) was all about. There was a whole day's work in some album covers for a bum like me.