I
n the 90s you couldn’t move for vinyl. Literally, it saturated every corner of the
counter culture. Immortalised in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, lampooned in Adam
and Joe’s vinyl police and deftly inserted into every hip film going including murder
fest Seven; back then vinyl was king.
Its’ surprising rebirth killed off cassettes and even challenged the cool factor of CDs,
you weren’t a smooth urban cad or sassy street wise siren unless you had a record
player with more plastic to play with than Michael Jackson. Then came MP3s . . .
a soulless music file, downloaded through an invisible force directly onto your laptop.
From here you could then cut the crap out and burn all your favourite tunes straight
onto CD. It was groundbreaking.
Hand on heart we would all admit to cutting back on CD purchases. Why travel to
the shops when the shops can travel to you? A click of a mouse and you can have
whatever you want whenever you want. Bad news for CDs even worse for the near
obsolete vinyl. Until now that is . . . because now you can take that precious 1967
Donald Byrd jazz record and convert the whole bloody thing into a little MP3 file and
take it everywhere with you. In theory this is great news, especially for those owning
records on the rare side, some of which may not even be available on CD. In practice
it’s a long drawn out process which can have variable results. Experienced record
collector David Jackson talks about how he first started converting vinyl to MP3:
“I ended up with one of these completely unfathomable mobile phones with my
contract. I could barely tell one end from the other, but gradually as I was forced to
use it more and more I discovered it had some surprising little features including
a thing which changed whatever I recorded into an MP3 file I could then play on
my Ipod. The quality was atrocious, but I must have spent hours holed up next to
my record player recording track after track of my favourite records. Actually the
whole process was so time consuming I mustn’t have eaten, washed, spoken to
anyone or got laid for the best part of a year.”
Fear not however as now for about eighty sheets you can purchase a specially
designed USB turntable complete with transfer software for you PC. You spin the
plastic, it does all the rest every crackle and hiss straight to MP3 as if by magic.
Better yet invest in one of these and pick up a 2
nd
hand record for a pound or so and
in the long run, track by track, you’ll be better off financially as well as spiritually.
Remember it’s never final till it’s on vinyl.

_The vin

yl
countdown
_By Chris Hammond
The Best Places


to Buy Vinyl_
Aberdeen_The Cavern_Deep in the bowels of trendy
Belmont Street lies an underground Aladdin’s cave of vinyl. Here Mike, a Gandalf-
esque authority on krautrock, wonky funk and obscure indie will guide you on your
quest to find the perfect plastic. Be warned, during school lunchtimes the place is
subject to stink-bomb bombardments from uncouth youths ignorant of the musical
paradise which lies only metres below the street surface.
Dundee_Grouchos_Fast becoming Scotland’s 2
nd
home for
music Dundee houses the wonderful Grouchos, an emporium of esoteric aural
delights. Whether it’s CDs, gig tickets, records or DVDs you are after you could do
a lot worse.
Edinburgh_Morningside Road_Ahh Edinburgh,
home of the savvy charity shop. You spy a rare Comsat Angels single, you check
the price and you recoil and the unfeasibly accurate market rate attributed to it.
Not so Morningside Road! Take advantage of the well meaning Mums and stock up
on the finest of the eighties at prices so unfathomably low it’s practically robbery.
Glasgow_Lost in Music_Rare and raunchy is the theme
here. You can pick up anything from classic jazz to hideous hip hop. Whatever
floats your boat. Take some cash and expect to be parted with all of it, Lost in
Music doesn’t disappoint.
Music_44_
www.scotcampus.com_
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