Trollheart

Who here is old enough to remember the care we used to have to treat albums with? You remember slipping off the dust cover (always slide it on so that the opening is at the top, though some people preferred either side - never the bottom or you could have a broken album on your hands!) then sliding the actual inner sleeve out, tapping the record gently into your hands, being careful not to touch the surface with the fingers, handling it gently (flat of palms holding the sides carefully) onto the turntable? Lifting the stylus, checking if there was any fluff on it, if so blowing it gently off before lowering the needle?

The annoyance when you accidentally hit into the record player and the album would skip? Turning the album over when side one ended to hear the other side? Flicking through boxes/racks/shelves of albums in your local second-hand record store looking for bargains? Decorating the inner sleeves with your own art? Learning all the lyrics? Admiring the cover art? The smell of the inside cover of a gatefold album?

Share your vinyl memories, from a time when playing an album was more than just selecting a file or pressing play on your ipod, when listening to music was a real pleasure and quite the ritual, when once you'd bought an album you'd listen to it many times as that was the only new one you could afford.

I suppose I'll never go back to vinyl, but it's nice to think of those days.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018