"Let's get people over one evening for a few drinks and listen to our old vinyl together, like we did in the old days", they said.
Hmmmm, I thought, my "old days" must be a bit more recent than theirs. I was more Radio One, mangled tapes and the sony walkman, than pot, Cat Stevens and "Ina Gadda Da Vida".
Still, trying to get with the programme, Friday night found The Husband and I ferreting around in the dank closet in the basement where we had stashed and forgotten our boxes of records when we moved in 11 years ago. I have to say my LPs were pretty uninspiring, and the ones The Husband was unearthing, I was quite frankly thrilled to have neither seen nor heard in 11 years.
At the gathering, my vinyl went down like a lead balloon. People pretended they had never heard of the Human League, I mean "Don't You Want Me", who has never heard of that? They thought Tears for Fears were Depeche Mode and that Depeche Mode were Canadian...
The real heroine of the night though was Ms C, whose 45s were like a fantastic "Best of the 60's" compilation, and included the fabulous "Leader of the Pack" single by the Shangri-La's, which was greeted by "Oh is this from "Grease"?"
If the evening taught me anything, it's that I don't look back fondly on the era of skips, scratches and pops, that I love being able to zap easily through songs I don't like, and that it is a hell of a lot easier to transport 4000 songs on an ipod than 20 LPs in a crate on a dolly.
My one regret is that I couldn't find my Saturday Night Fever album, which I suspect now has pride of place in The Brother's living room. Still a quick click on Spotify and I can listen to it anytime for free, and with service like that, who really needs vinyl?
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