I love My Vinyl!

Well it's not all serious business here at The Production Room. So as another busy week comes to a close (Thanks to all who brought us their really great projects this week - Ideocore, Victoria Street, Evans Hardy and Young, Barnett Cox and Associates and Matrix Communications - we're proud to serve you!) It's time to pour a little Canadian Beer and put on a few sides.

Yup, I've never recovered from my DJ days when I spun vinyl live on the air for at least four hours a day 6 days a week. Oh yeah, those were the days. When I took the job, my boss pointed to a wall filled with vinyl LP's and said, "You can play any of these. Just remember to play a few of the new cuts and don't forget to take commercial breaks a couple of times an hour." That was the format. I was 22 years old. They gave me an FM station to play with and a paycheck too. I've been in love with music on vinyl ever since.

Well, here at the studio we've got a few LP's to play and I spent some time
tonight putting some of those great old songs on the turntable. Yes, we still have one. In fact you can pick up some premium old phono players really cheap these days.
And those of us who still have our vinyl find that those original pressings still sound surprisingly good. A hell of a lot better than mp3.

So I put on some Lovin' Spoonful, some Jackie Wilson, a bit of Geroge Harrison, Johnny Cash (on an original Sun pressing) and finished it off with Don Mclean singing, "American Pie". Mmmmm MMMM. That's good music.

The record companies sure are stuck in a rut today. Not just because they can't seem to figure out how to sell music. They can't figure out how to make people want to BUY music.

Back in the day we got free music from the record labels every week. Then the music promo reps called the radio station and begged us to play their songs. It was all free to the listener...until you wanted to own a copy, then you bought it.

Well, the internet changed that. But I'm not sure why. You might think the obvious answer is piracy and you might be right. But it seems to me that when music was free on the radio it made people want to buy it.

So maybe the music companies need to allow us to demo whateveer we want for free on line. Maybe they need to start their own on-line radio stations. Maybe they need to hire some 22 year old kids, point them to the music library and say, "You can play anything you want from here." Pretty soon now, the hottest internet sites are going to be all about live programming.

I'll bet that will be pretty interesting. And it might make me want to buy something new.

Have a good week.