The Only Good Thing about Vinyl was the Covers

I must have bought about 200 vinyl records before I bought a CD player. You can see some of them above, there’s a prize for the first person to name them all (album and artist).

It’s the first time those albums have seen the light of day for about 20 years. Some of them came out about ten years ago when my wife bought me a digital turntable for my birthday, but they quickly went back on the shelf when I discovered just how badly scratched they had become simply through being played.

I’d forgotten just what revelation CD quality sound was, I hadn’t realised just how much I’d taken it for granted. Today is Record Store Day and I note that lots of people are rediscovering the pleasures of vinyl.

Well, good luck to them. I won’t be joining them. CDs were much better than vinyl, and digital downloads are much better than CDs. My CDs are now ripped and in the attic and my music stored in the cloud so I can access it where and when I like. I toured the US one summer whilst at University. I took a Walkman and four C90 cassettes with me. Eight albums for ten weeks.

Never again.