How I fell in love with vinyl

From a tiny flat in Buenos Aires to the grandeur of London as I joined the love of my life, this is my journey... with a little help from friends and family who knew a thing or two about music.

Early memories

I am young enough to have missed the golden years of vinyl. I grew up in the nineties, an era dominated by cassette tapes and CDs, when vinyl was virtually extinct or, at best, relegated to a highly specialised and rather esoteric cult of connoisseurs.

I was raised in Argentina, in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Specifically, in a tiny flat (or apartment, for those of you across the pond) where my main distraction from the unforgivingly scorching heat so common to those latitudes was listening to records. There were more books and records in that tiny flat than there was space to actually store them.

Photograph: LARISA DUKA / Shutterstock.com

My dad had a fascinating collection of CDs and tapes of mainly progressive rock from the seventies, with a healthy dose of blues, soul, and rock and roll from all eras. I remember noticing he had some albums twice, in CD and tape format, and the occasional special edition.

You see, space and resources were limited, but there was room (and money) for this. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! I became, naturally, obsessed with records: my perfect day out as a kid meant going to my local record shop and spending hours browsing through the stalls. My mum would patiently wait for me because I was never done browsing. Needless to say, all my pocket money was spent on music. Birthday and Christmas gifts were sorted.

The only person I know who consciously owned vinyl records at the time was my uncle, another music connoisseur who had managed to keep most of the records from his childhood and teenage years in good condition. I vividly remember being impressed by the beauty and mysticism of 12” records neatly stored on his bookcase. It was from him, or rather through him, that I learned that records should be stored vertically, not horizontally.

Part of my uncle’s vinyl collection

There was more music mania in my family than I was old enough to acknowledge. My grandfather played organ at church, and accordion and keyboard at home. My grandmother would do the singing honours in perfect pitch. Rock-infused power ballads telling tales of heartbreak and regret blasted through my sister’s walkman through her entire adolescence. You only had to utter the first words of a Beatles song for my mum to tell you where she was and what she was doing when she first heard it.

Breakthrough

It was Janis Joplin’s “18 Essential Songs” on a cassette tape I borrowed from my dad at age 8 or 9 that took my obsession with records to another level. From then onwards, the contemporary soul/R&B/pop music I was (still am) obsessed with (Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, George Michael) brought me way back to soul legends like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Ray Charles and Etta James. Big, powerful voices have always been my anchor.

I discovered other electric blues artists through my dad (Robert Cray, Eric Clapton, Johnny Copeland) and this journey led me to funkier stuff (Earth, Wind and Fire, Rick James, the Isley Brothers, Bobby Womack), making a pit stop via a side door to rock bands like Queen, Depeche Mode, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Pink Floyd.

Electronica came a bit later: Morcheeba, Portishead, Massive Attack. Quite eclectic, one might say. I was and still am pulled by so many genres, and I am particularly drawn to artists who defy them.

Something my dad once said, that vinyl was actually “better”, stuck with me for years. My coolest uncle still preserved his vinyl collection, so that had to mean something. Fast forward to my early twenties, in London, and the vinyl revival got me completely hooked. This was approximately 8 or 9 years ago. My friend Juan from Argentina was already into vinyl and he kept urging me to do the same.

I moved to London roughly a decade ago. I moved for love. Love for Stephan, a man I still happily call my husband (who, by the way, among many other talents, plays piano and is blessed with perfect pitch — see a trend here?) and love for the English language (it was English/Spanish Legal Translation studies at uni in Buenos Aires where I met Juan).

So I finally did it. I bought a cheap turntable, just to try it out. Juan is my music guru and I tend to follow his music advice blindly. It had to be good.

The only vinyl record I owned at the time was a gift from my sister: a 7” European issue of “Vision of Love” by (obviously) Mariah Carey. My favourite song from my favourite artist in a fancy format which looked beautiful but which I knew nothing about.

So I played it. Yes, my vinyl rite of passage, or baptism of fire, was with a 45 rpm 7” record. Not the easiest for a newbie with a cheap turntable to figure out how to play… it was basically sink or swim.

I was mesmerised. I guess it helped that I knew the song very well and had been listening to it obsessively over the years in many other formats.

That timeless, distinctive, unmistakable crackling sound (which I then learned is called surface noise), immediately followed by those mysterious sci-fi-esque synthesisers, the classic warmth of those doo-wop inspired beats, culminating in those iconic operatic high notes and vocal acrobatics… it was sublime. I was immediately captivated by the depth, richness and overall presence of the sound. The details were subtle yet utterly compelling.

Regardless of your thoughts on Mariah and your taste in music, imagine being introduced to vinyl with this song. Masterfully sung, unanimously regarded as one of the most powerful debuts in music history, and there I was, discovering it on vinyl, and discovering vinyl with it. There was no way I could possibly turn back. Ever.

A way of life

I guess my love of vinyl comes from this inalienable need to listen to physical records so I can feel completely absorbed in the music. This sensation of being carried away, far removed from the struggles of a happy yet, at times, unstable and unapologetically intense life.

My records were my only refuge from the typical school bullies and countless financial crises you can expect to find in one of the most male-dominated, football (soccer)-obsessed and economically unstable countries in the world, where sadly some homophobia still persists, and where rampant inflation and currency defaults are par for the course.

But there’s also this unashamed nostalgia for a time I never got to see with my own eyes, but of which my loving family always spoke so dearly. A time when, notwithstanding the trials and tribulations of any period, people listened to music more (ironically, perhaps, despite having less music readily available). A time when, if you wanted an album, you had to go to the record store and wait until you were home to play it. A time when families and friends would gather around a turntable and enjoy their music, their stories and their lives together.

Discovering vinyl felt like coming full circle with a life dominated by music and physical records. I obsessively started reading, researching, experimenting, buying, collecting and learning more about vinyl.

Speakers, hi-fi systems, first pressings, reissues, turntables, cleaning and maintenance, music history, industry trends, sound engineering, mastering, remastering… I even learned about vinyl manufacturing, supply chains, and shipping logistics throughout the years.

Vinyl unlocked for me an entire encyclopaedia of incredibly valuable knowledge which has redefined the way I listen to music, and dare I say, the way I see the world.

It’s fair to say that all major decisions in my life have been driven by passion and love. Vinyl is no exception.

Thinking about it, I guess a more appropriately worded question would be… how could I not fall in love with vinyl?

Thank you for reading and/or listening. See you around and, as always, happy spinning!