A Doug Sahm album recorded for the Antone's Record label.

Why listen to music on vinyl?

Record sales peaked in 1978. After that, records started slowly giving ground to the cassette tape before surrendering more rapidly to the CD. Still, the album era continued unabashed until the advent of digital music. Napster severely wounded the industry in 1999, and the iPod delivered the apparent death blow two years later.

By this time, the record store was reduced to a few independent dinosaurs who were holding on for as long as they could before following Blockbuster into extinction. Suddenly, in 2007, trends reversed and record sales started to slowly rise again. This trend accelerated in the 2010s and continues through today. There were more records sold in 2023 than we have seen since 1987, but what is driving this startling resurgence?

If you have not already, this is why you should join the vinyl revolution:

The artist

Ray Wylie Hubbard once said, “there are two types of people in the world – the day people and the night people, and it’s the night people’s job to get the day people’s money.” Buying physical albums supports the artists financially in ways that streaming does not, but the artist is not the only night person to think about. Record stores are full of night people, and a world with record stores is a better world. Buying a few albums to help keep the lights on is a small ask.

The physical experience

When an artist produces an album they obsess over the details. The music plays the starring role but there is a supporting cast of cover art, liner notes, lyric sheets, and any other number of things that are easily overlooked if you are not holding a copy in your hands. The LP provides the largest, and highest quality, production of these materials.

The superior sound quality

This is particularly true for music that was originally recorded for this format. A song that sounds dull and flat on streaming services will come alive with new sounds and textures when played on a vinyl record. The more complex the music the starker the difference. A Duke Ellington or Count Basie vinyl album sounds like a completely different recording than its digital counterpart.

The halftime show

On a vinyl album there comes a moment when the music stops. The listener finds the need to stand up, flip the album, and restart the music. It’s a naturally occurring halftime. Clever artists devise ways to use this to their advantage and slip subtle pairing into the two sides that you would overlook in a different format.

The hunt

Digging through crates of old albums is fun. It’s exciting to start a search knowing that you could literally find anything. There is a lot of music out there. Bob Dylan has released forty studio albums and fifteen live albums. Paul McCartney has released twenty-seven albums since leaving the Beatles. There is a lot of good music out there you have not heard yet.

The rarity

Streaming services put millions of albums in your pocket, but they don’t tell you what they don’t have. Exploring crates of old records leads to new discoveries. Between bootlegs, live recordings, and studio releases there is a lot of music to discover in the used bins and a lot of it is not available online.

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Featured albums from the Listening Lounge

Read My Lips front album cover

Read My Lips might be the purest example of Austin blues music available, and a statement album from one of the city’s biggest stars. Lou Ann Barton dominated the Austin Music Awards in the eighties. She won female vocalist of the year three times in five years before they gave up and put her in the hall of fame. Her voracious style was something legendary music journalist Margaret Moser liked to describe as “a voice that can peel chrome from a trailer hitch.”

Under the Double Ego album cover

Under the Double Ego was Kinky Friedman’s melancholic goodbye note to the music industry. It would be thirty-two eventful years before he recorded another studio album. When he recorded this one he was disillusioned and chose to work with the Austin based Sunrise label, despite their limited distribution network, rather than deal with corporate record executives. The album was produced locally by Sammy Allred (member of the Geezinslaws and long time radio personality who would eventually be included in the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.) The Texas Jewboys disbanded before the album was recorded leaving Kinky to assemble studio musicians from the crowded local talent pool, which included recruiting Chris O’Connell from Asleep at the Wheel fame.

On a cold February night in 1978 The Skunks played what is widely regarded as the first punk rock show in Austin, and for the next six years they continued to be a definitive presence. The three piece lineup evolved over the years, with bassist Jesse Sublett serving as the anchor. They pioneered a new sound leading acclaimed journalist Margaret Moser to declare, “In Austin’s punk rock history book, the Skunks are the first page.”

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