Did I ever stop buying records?
Yes, I did to a certain degree.
When I began working in advertising agencies, I thought I now had the purchasing power to buy what I wanted. Meaning more records, more comic books, more books, with travel thrown in.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to buy all my luho. I was focused on making a name for myself in the highly competitive world of advertising as well as winning awards.
While my workstation had my boom box, turntable with an amplifier, and speakers, I was working long hours that didn’t leave me time to check out record stores or even buy the old music magazines that kept me updated years earlier. Even my comic book collection somewhat suffered,
My father operated two record stores called Rhythm of the City, located at Rustan’s Cubao and Makati. At that time, in the early 1990s, almost his entire stock was cassettes with some compact discs.
In 1990, a CD was priced at Php375 (with vinyl records at Php 125 and tapes selling at Php100). Music fans rightfully felt CDs were expensive.
By 1992, the landscape changed. Compact discs were now seen as a better alternative to records. It was said to sound better (I agree), easier to store (I concur), and was indestructible (er, definitely not).
Even record stores were downsizing literally in floor space because you could stack CDs atop each other unlike records.
The first CD I ever purchased was The Singular Adventures of the Style Council followed by R.E.M.’s Out of Time, and U2’s Achtung Baby.
Then the local alternative music scene exploded, and it was released either on CD or cassette. Hence, my CD collection quickly grew.
I still picked up the odd record here and there (and what pickups they were) – Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, and others from that time. But the problem was space, especially in a small apartment.
Moving to Hong Kong later, even HMV was stocking up more CDs than records.
So, I began to buy CD versions of my records. The exception to that was the punk and hardcore albums. I think the music and the format work well together. The graphic and jarring artwork really stand out. To wit – the Clash’s London Calling, the Ramones’ self-titled debut album, Minor Threat’s self-titled debut that inspired Rancid’s And Out Come the Wolves, the Misfits’ Earth A.D.Wolf’s Blood, Agnostic Front’s Victim In Pain, and Cro-Mags’ Age of Quarrel, to name but a very few.
And while I am particular about sound quality, punk isn’t ‘clean’ like shoegaze, metal, or even jazz. It is raw, aggressive. It’s punk.
And my return to punk was because of Rancid.
My office was a stone’s throw away from the Silvercord Center, a popular mall and office complex along Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong, where I lived in 1995. Working for Universal Records then moving to Hong Kong (where I was still in the music business) not soon after that made me fall in love with music all over again.
I often went to the Silvercord Centre for lunch and once in a while passed by the KPS music store on the ground floor. I preferred the massive three-story HMV on nearby Haiphong Road as well as the numerous small shops in TST.
billboards do the job socmed
But that particular day, on display on the magazine rack was Spin Magazine with Rancid on the cover. I bought the magazine and read the article on Rancid when I got to my apartment, ran back out, and purchased And Out Come the Wolves, the Offspring’s Smash, and Ramones’ Adios Amigos.
So, while I was purchasing a lot of CDs (I have since amassed a collection of over 5,000 CDs), when it came to punk and hardcore, I stuck to vinyl.
It was in 2012 that I made the first step to returning to vinyl full time.
I was at the old Hong Kong Records shop at the Gateway Arcade in Harbour City, TST, buying CDs and some DVDs when I saw they had record racks dedicated to vinyl. I was drawn to the remastered version of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Legend album.
During a trip to Kingston, Jamaica, in 2004, I found myself in a record store and managed to buy the original Jamaican pressing of the record as well as quite a few others! They were selling for a dollar each. And although it was second-hand, I didn’t mind.
So, in 2012, there was a remastered version. I bought the record.
Except I had no turntable.
About a year later, my girlfriend gifted me with a Paul Weller record (his debut solo album) along with a portable turntable with Bluetooth.
Of course, I was thankful, but that portable player reminded me of my first ever one that my dad got as a young boy. No way was that needle of that portable player going to touch the grooves of my Bob Marley and Paul Weller.
I went on to buy a proper rig that set me back by about 70k. I still had many of my old records (I had lost most of them through the years when my mom threw a lot of them away, while some were destroyed during Ondoy and badly damaged during a fire that hit my parents’ home). I had my records back in New York shipped back.
And since then, I never looked back. Unlike before, this time, I took care and kept my CD collection, although I hardly buy them now. CDs sound better, but when we are talking about warmth and the listening experience, vinyl is still tops.
Who would have thought my old Misfits, New York hardcore punk, my old OPM albums, and others would be valuable today? Luckily, I bought them the first time around.