The Vinyl Record Ethnography Project

I spend a lot of time in record stores. Many would say that I spend too much time rummaging through those dusty bins, that what once began as an innocent consumerist hobby has become closer to an obsession or addiction. 
I think it's more than that.

I see the vinyl record as one of the most material manifestations of the musical immaterial, not just any other consumer object. Music lives in the grooves, canyons and valleys of those black discs, and it changes and ages with each play. When we put a record on, we hear its playing history in pops and scratches, the occasional scrape, skip, or repeat. While these effects sometimes become intrusive, I see them as a part of what makes each individual record unique - regardless of whether it is part of a mass-produced global release or a private pressing.
Each user of a vinyl record leaves their indelible marks on it, on the packaging in the form of writing, bends, wears, tears, sometimes even original artwork, and on the music itself simply by playing the record. In contrast with the now-ubiquitous digital formats of mp3, FLAC, WAV, the vinyl record's identity is forged through the act of playing and listening, while digital files only gain individual "identity" as they degrade in quality through conversion, compression, and other methods of transfer.

I almost exclusively buy old records, because a beaten copy with history is worth more in memories, time, and cultural background than any pristine reissue copy. Plus, the old one with its previous owner's stoned musings written on it probably costs less as well.
A project-exhibit by the artist Rutherford Chang that took place earlier this year elucidates how mass-produced vinyl becomes something deeply personal and strongly individual with time. We Buy White Albums focuses on the blank canvas  of the Beatles' much loved White Album as it becomes colored with age, drawn on with love, scratched, beaten, warped, and worn from excessive play, neglect, or some combination of the two. The project does a fantastic job of demonstrating that each vinyl record has a unique history, tempered and formed by its owner(s) as well as by the artists, labels, distributors, and all others involved in its production.

A beautifully personalized White Album from Chang's collection

And the dusty bin ceases to be just a dusty bin. It is a treasure trove of lost and found loves, musical objects with cultural histories of their own. I never know when I might find what I'm looking for, and I never know exactly what I'm looking for. In the digital age, this cultural materiality and uncertainty can feel like a blessing. I'm always content to while the hours away in crate-digging meditations, in blissful pursuit of those lost and found loves, those pleasures old and new.

This post inaugurates Oblique Acoustemologies' Vinyl Ethnography series, in which I post rips of rare, out of print, or little known records and attempt to recreate their background - the stores they came from, where they've been, the significance of the cultural attitudes expressed in the music and packaging - in as much as much depth as I can. Stay tuned for this series, beginning very soon.