First vinyl record...

 


   Many people have started shopping for vinyls before they even owned a record player. For most of us millenials this happened mainly because records looked so awesome. If you were born in the 90s then records were long dead by then and once you started watching old films, listening to music decades past, and whatever other filthy delights corrupt a young heart to the hairspray world of hard rock, new wave, or whatever, then records looked like something exotic and exciting.

   I must have been around 14 when I bought my first vinyl record. For that matter of fact, they were two: In Trance and Tokyo Tapes (double feature), both by the Scorpions. Coincidentally (or maybe not really), Tokyo Tapes was also the first CD I bought just a couple years before. I was a major Scorpions junkie by then, hyperventilating at the mere mention, sight, or thought of anything that could be linked back to the Scorpions. Proof of my obsession was the scorpion tattoo I had done on my thigh just the year before, exactly like the girl on the cover of Love At First Sting. Anyhow...

   This was years before the hipster outbreak led to vinyl being cool again and every band releasing their new material on vinyl. At that point there must have been only a handful of bands releasing their new material on vinyl, and to be honest I can only think of HIM and their vinyl singles right now. Far from common practice, I'd say. As you understand you wouldn't find vinyls on record shops back then. Unless it was a big record shop that would carry the most obscure singles, and the occassional anniversary boxset...

   But used records shops were still a thing, supported by the ever-renewed hordes of metalheads, rockers, punks with obscure taste and newly baptized brats like me. It was even before the recession (or before it hit hard anyway) so they were all there, very much in business in all their dusty glory. A handful of those record shops could be found in basements all along what used to be the hip student area of the 70s (read: a coffee shop, obscure bookshops and alternative fashion littered pedetrian street relatively close to the student dorms, halfway between the city center and the university facilities) or in backstreets of dying neighborhoods that used to be bursting with commercial life a few decades ago but where now the average resident age is 78. My first experience came from the decadent student area. Now mainly frequented by young kids who wanted to find books on black magic and junkies, I would go down once a month to buy my overpriced blue hair dye. I was walking up the street one day and on the store window, I saw a familiar sight, yet many times bigger than I used to see it: Rudolf Schenker bent backwards, with his guitar and 'stache, seemingly rocking as hard as his lungs would allow him to. I HAD TO GO IN.

   So I climbed down the few steps, opened the door, and in I went. Must have been a quite peculiar sight, visibly uncomofrtable in all my pierced glory. I was too afraid I was going to break something or say something stupid. It was all to obvious I was a vinyl virgin. Too shy to enquire about the record on the window, I started shifting through the bins, discovering many peculiar bands and artists (I distinctly remember a particular Odyssey with a cute curly haired dude on the cover, a very sexy hard rocking lady Lita, a very interesting cover art including a roaring Tyger and green paint that magically turned into cage bars) while big, older, scary rockers who knew their shit came in, found what they were looking for, bought it, left, while I was trying to take up as little space as possible and will my existence not to be too annoying. Eventually I felt a pang in my chest, as I found myself holding a record cover, all black and dark, with the semi-obscured pale form of a blonde lady riding a guitar...In Trance!

   I would have walked straight to the cashier to demand Tokyo Tapes and buy them both right then and there, even if I would have to pawn my shoes for them (not sure how much a pair of beaten up hand-me-down chuck taylors would be worth), if it hadn't just started to rain heavily. Just a glance outside the window above my right shoulder informed me that the dreaded rainfall of the season had started again, the clear sunny say suddenly turning into a watery windy mess that was bordering on monsoon, so I decided to take my sweet time and browse through some more bins, all the while holding the Scorpions record tightly on my chest. Nowhere to go with that rain...

   And then it happened. Rain started flowing in through the door. Let me illustrate this for you: the shop might have been a basement, but the building was on a slope that would naturally direct water away from the entrance, practically eliminating the risk of flooding from rain. Yet the wind was THAT hard. On top of this, the door's frame was added on top of the stairs, adding an extra 10cm of insulated aluminum that the water would first have to pool up against and then seep in... Well that happened too. Suddenly there was water flowing in, rushing down the three indoor steps and flooding the little room packed with cardboard boxes with LPs stacked up in them. And just as suddenly there's me and the owner, frantically running about the place, picking up boxes from the floor, moping up the water, shoving rags under the door to stop the flooding, drying up what sleeves had gotten wet and getting records out of wet boxes...

   Eventually the rain did stop, as it always did, a short time later, right after everything was soaked through and through. The sun was back up, already drying everything, the flow of water inside the shop had stopped, and we were able to catch a breath. The shop owner reassured me that despite owning this place since 1976, this flooding incident was a first for him. I finally found the courage to ask about the Tokyo Tapes record on the shop window, and he took it down for me. He gave me a sweet discount on both records, and I left, prancing with joy (and stomping both feet in numerous puddles on the way because I was too busy looking at the bag in my hand than looking at where I was going). After this incident I have been frequently going back to buy more records, discover new favourite bands, or simply to say hi. I learned most of the things I know on record cleaning, maintenance, and simple record player fix-ups from the enthusiastic shop owner, who did not forget our little adventure and was always eager to find me spare parts, instructions, and give me discounts...

   It would be a while until I finally got my own record player. Until then I had to make do with friend's (or friend's parents') players, carrying my records back and forth so we could lie on the floor, smoking and listening, making our own attempts at songwriting...it's certainly something, being able to lie on your own floor, listening to your own records, on your own player, in privacy and solitude. I don't know when I would have gotten my first record if I hadn't seen Rudolf Schenker on that window that day. Small, insignificant coincidences like this one influence our lives more than we think. I made a conscious decision that day: to go around with hair looking like shit for one more month than live without my favourite music-even if I wouldn't be able to listen to it just yet. It's a decision that has stuck with me though the years, as I often find myself forsaking food for the sake of more music (perhaps not as often as I should, however... XD ). Bottomline is, my first record was an unforgettable experience. It started out awkward, and terrifying enough, only to develop soon into a heartwarming experience, a memory that I like to revisit often, as it has influenced my life to such a great extend... More details on that, coming up ;)