Graham Reid | | 1 min read
At some time in the late Eighties I was asked to write a piece about the death of vinyl. Sales were sliding and CDs had taken over as the preferred format.
Big, expensive and heavy if you are moving house, the pile of LPs was becoming dead weight.
My article had an illustration by Richard Dale of a record in a sombrero riding off into the sunset.
But then in the last 10 years there has been a massive resurgence of vinyl record sales.
Big, expensive and heavy, but people – young people in particular – wanted records again. And now vinyl outsells CDs.
Records have a personality of their own, possessing one means something in a way that CDs could never accrue.
The story of vinyl in this country is one worth telling . . . and now Charlotte Ryan and Duncan Grieve have created a four-part podcast covering the history of vinyl from 1879 when there was a phonograph demonstration in Christchurch and talkeries, through recordings of Maori concert parties right up to today when Taylor Swift has drawn young people, young women in particular, into record shops.
In the course of the 20 minute episodes, we hear from new and old vinyl collectors, record store people, pressing plant people and others who tell of their passion, collections and memories of records.
It's a podcast which is both history and entertainment.
You can hear it at Spotify here.
There are facts and funny stories, and it is also available on vinyl. Of course.
The double album The Long Play will be available in record stores on Saturday (see where below), but a copy will be hidden somewhere in the racks so you are obliged to do a bit of crate digging to find it.
But that's why you go record shops, right?
To dig and discover.
Enjoy.
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For more information on The Long Play you can read Duncan Grieve's introduction at The Spinoff here
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