Recently I started to collecting vinyls. It all started when Record Store Day was happened and in the middle of crowds and beats and songs and sweats, I decided to bought my first vinyl ever, which is a 7" split single from local band Efek Rumah Kaca/Pandai Besi. It cost me about Rp 150.000 (about $13 while this post was made) and I have no idea at first: how will I play this thingy? Eventually I ended up browsing around via internet some local record seller (which turned out, plenty) and found one of them opened a pre-order of Crosley's turntables. I hooked up with the blue turquoise Cruiser type, but in the end (and thank God, I haven't paid anything for the pre-order) they informed me that they canceled the order, and they still don't know when they will continue to open the pre-order again. At that day, my dream to played the only vinyl I had in that time, faintly died.
Suddenly, out of the blue, Dad suddenly fancied hi-end sound system. He browsed around, asked around, tested a lot of speakers and amplifiers, and bought a lot of hi-fi themed magz. In the end, at that particular evening, he came home with 4 or 5 boxes of speakers, amplifier, CD player and a subwoffer. The day of standard cd player/cassette player/tuner was gone, and those beautiful pile of unboxed electronical thingy were connected, plugged in and out, electrified and grounded. And my Dad took his favourite CD: Incognito. And our ears were pleased.
I, at sometime, forgotten about the lust of having a turntable. I played several blues tracks and jazz tracks. I even bought Beethoven's CD just for fulfill the curiosity. Days gone and by, and one day, Dad bought a turntable. A simple, transparent hard-covered turntable. I knew when I saw it, I will not sleep that night. And I never been wrong. As it was destined to be there, between those pile of electric, eccentric, sound system; the turntable was fit in, as in color and size. And after plugged in some cables, trials and errors were happened during that time, I played my own first vinyl.
It taste different.
The cracked sound, the weird feeling when you do the process from taking the vinyl, slide out the inside sleeve, took the plate carefully, place it down, moved the bar to the above of the vinyl, and dropped it slowly as the plate was spin and the needle create some cracking sound and eventually the song came in. The familiar tunes that I heard many times in CD and digital. It was like a magical experience. Maybe, that was a part of FUN explained abstractly.
So, here I am. Hunting down new and old plates. My collection got bigger, and in the end, my Dad got influenced too. The good news is there's a particular road in Jakarta that sold second-hand (or maybe multiple-handed) antics and some stuff. From sunglasses, Chinese ceramics, telephones, typewriters, bags, suitcases, and of course, vinyls and cassette tapes. Just last Friday I went there to bought some old plates. I got The Hollies, a band that played some classical Mexican songs (Spanish Flea, etc.), two plates of 60-esque saxophones hits, and a 7" Skeeter Davis single (The End of The World one..) (Too bad, there's a lot of scratches.) I guess this is a start line. Either for fun or some investment for the future. Yes, I read several articles that made a point that collecting vinyl was considered as investment. Well, gotta try to allocate these money for plates and living and legos and books then.
