Bijan Sabet

New turntable brings back old memories

My new turntable arrived yesterday.

After the kids went to bed, I unpacked it and took a long look. Beautiful.

First thing I had to decide was where to put it. Our whole home AV system is a bit complicated and most of it is based on a network server + Sonos + Boxee.

I decided the turntable was going to live in a parallel universe and separate from the home audio system.

I had an extra receiver lying around and a set of Paradigm bookshelf speakers. So i put those plus the turntable in my home office. Unlike my complicated digital system (which requires weekly router reboots and firmware updates to the Sonos), the new setup took about 10 minutes to “configure”.

Then came the moment of truth. Time to put a record on.

Earlier that day I went over to Newbury Comics which is only a few blocks from my office at Spark. I picked up The Who’s “Quadrophenia” and Neil Young’s “Live at Massey Hall”.

I decided to put the Who record on first. Oh. My. God. So many old memories came back as I lifted the arm and watched it float down to the record. And then the music delivered as promised. The first song is “I am the Sea” which then leads to “The Real Me”.

Fucking brilliant.

Neil Young on vinyl was also an incredible trip down memory lane. Loved every minute of it. The experience playing vinyl records is something that i long forgotten. The sound and feel is simply amazing.

Now comes the fun part. I need more records!

I’m consuming new music like crazy as you probably know if you visit this blog. But for now I am only going to buy the “classic” stuff for the turntable. At least for the time being. (the one exception I made was for Ben Kweller’s new record, “Changing Horses” which I pre-ordered but have been listening to on my iphone for awhile).

I think the next record I’m going to buy is first album by The Police - “Outlandos d’Armour”.

What else should I get?