Note: Originally appeared at my personal site, iRich.
The music I made my own most of the ’90s had changed directions and my tastes were changing. Around 1999 I got back into talk radio, to the point I was accepted into broadcasting school. In an age before podcasts, it wasn’t that hard really. A bit of a regret today, I either gave or threw away CDs I thought I didn’t a care about. It wasn’t to embrace the new way to buy music, by downloading it. Around thirteen years of people doing that, and something began to happen. Or at least it went mainstream as music will.
A need to physically hold and listen to recorded music, have new experiences you don’t get from MP3 files, to relive good and bad times with a no laser vinyl. More commonly known as a record. You can’t hold MP3 files. You can’t really look at cover art and liner notes. Until music appears more out of a cloud then it does now, you can’t collect gigs of recordings.
I wouldn’t come to that realization with either CDs or records well into adulthood. Looking back to the late 1980s and during the 1990s I associated vinyl and one of my area record stores as a place with aging hippies and possibly stoner types.
This record store I’m thinking of was run by a Jerry Garcia looking guy who would play similar music. He seemed knowledgable enough, I’d go there to perhaps buy a new popular artist on CD. What I couldn’t appreciate then was guys like him, shops like his were going to go away. Its that way with any subject and knowledgeable people. Its more then just the information, its the experiences. Reading about them sometimes isn’t enough.

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