Scratch the notion that LPs are a "sunset market."

Despite - and perhaps because of - digital trend, vinyl is now retro chic

By Daniel Rubin
Inquirer Staff Writer


With 1,973 songs in his iPod and Radiohead's "Karma Police" on his earphones, Brian Brazina strode into Spaceboy Music on South Street searching for digital delivery.

But it was fresh vinyl that grabbed the 25-year-old - a brand-new, cellophane-wrapped pressing of Babes in Arms, a 1966-1971 rarities collection by the Detroit guitar-army called MC5.

"A great band," said Brazina, a Center City concierge, admiring the LP's oversize art. "I love the grainy sound of vinyl."

Against a trend of compactability, portability and personalization - and maybe because of them - vinyl is making an unlikely return.

You can't say vinyl is back because it was never really gone. Certainly not for audiophiles who swear by albums' warmer sound and tactile superiority, or DJs whose hunting and gathering kept record stores going during the leanest years, since the CD's arrival in 1983.

Since then, records and turntables have become what Brian Majeski, editor of Music Trades magazine, calls a "sunset market."

Greet the new morning. Urban Outfitters is selling sleek $300 turntables for the holidays, and retro models appear in catalogs from L.L. Bean, Hammacher Schlemmer, Restoration Hardware and Brookstone. Target, too.

Warner Bros. and Rhino Records are releasing their back catalogs on vinyl, including the entire LP collection of the Grateful Dead. Next year, Sony plans to reintroduce LPs.

"It's become trendy, cool, a novelty," said Stefanie Douglas, 28, manager at Cue Records at Fourth and South Streets, where DJs shop for soul, hip-hop and R&B wax to sample.

To walk into Spaceboy is to fall through time - rows of shiny LPs for sale: vintage Captain Beefheart next to classic wax by the New York Dolls, Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding next to Love's Da Capo - all as newly minted as the Interpol, Elliott Smith and the Postal Service records on the other wall.

Much of that product comes from Sundazed, which is releasing 40 titles on vinyl this year.

When people in his hometown of Coxsackie, N.Y., ask label founder Bob Irwin why he still makes records, he tells them to check out prime-time TV.

"At some point, you'll see vinyl, whether it's the opening of Monk or One Tree Hill, with a guy standing in front of a rack of records, to ads for Toyota or Tide," says Irwin, 47. "It's all young people."

And they are the ones he still makes records for.

"I have no interest in selling music only to the audiophile community," he said. "I make records to introduce people to great music, and let them hear it on what I consider to be the best format available."

Fifteen years ago, Irwin started Sundazed, making CDs and a handful of albums - the Knickerbockers, the Trashmen - just as the major labels began phasing out vinyl.

Sundazed did fine, he said, until 1993, when the majors had given up and music stores followed suit. "People gave up looking for it," he said.

In the mid-'90s, he put out only four or five titles a year. His company's reputation attracted the attention of Bob Dylan's management in 2001, and Irwin was invited to reintroduce Dylan's original Columbia titles on vinyl.

Sundazed has now put out nine of them on hefty, 180-gram vinyl, priced comparably to a CD. Next year Sundazed will release 45 titles, from Aretha Franklin's first Atlantic album to five jazz LPs.

Matador, in New York City, is another label that has made vinyl work. "For us, vinyl sales are stronger than they have been for years, despite higher prices," said Patrick Amory, the indie label's general manager.

"We treat our LPs like luxury items, press them on heavy vinyl, do gatefolds, inserts, printed inners."

Amory says DJs have driven most of the sales, and new technology - digital machines that replicate the sound of records, scratching and all - will cause sales to slow.

The numbers for turntables, although modest, are on the rise. The International Music Products Association says about 69,000 players were sold last year, not counting professional mixers for DJs. That is the highest number since the 105,000 sold in 2000.

Record sales remain relatively low - about one for every 500 CDS sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. With the majors getting back into vinyl, that presumably will increase.

Vinyl accounted for about 5 percent of the business at Old City's AKA Music two years ago - the last time owner Mike Hoffman checked. "I think it is going up a couple points," he said.

Why? Maybe it's digital backlash. Alan Light, editor of Tracks music magazine, notes that MP3 players have allowed albums to be deconstructed into "menus of songs," stripped of context.

LPs bring a fan back to the days of carefully sequenced sides of music - shorter, more essential.

But Light isn't putting too much stock into a vinyl revival. "My question is: 'How much are these turntables in these lifestyle stores intended to be listened to, and how much are they art pieces?' People are selling 12-by-12-inch frames to put album covers on their walls. Are they just sort of retro accessories that look cool, like the way people have manual typewriters around?"

Jim Webster, co-owner of the Philadelphia Record Exchange, at Fifth and South Street, says that kids are doing what they always have done: discovering previous generations' cast-offs.

"It has to do with an adventurousness of spirit," said Webster, 51, hand-rolling a Gauloise cigarette as a 60-year-old Mills Brothers song played on his turntable.

"Retro isn't a fashion. It's what you do when you're on your own and most things around you stink."

Dryw Skully, 28, who spins records each month at the 700 Club in Northern Liberties, has a purist's system for record purchases: If it was originally made for vinyl, he'll buy it on vinyl.

"You can go to the Princeton Record Exchange and pick up an old Rolling Stones record for $1 as opposed to getting a CD of it at Tower Records," he said.

"That record has been someplace. It has some vintage to it, some history. It's not from some jewel case that you open up and pop into the computer."

SOURCE: http://www.philly.com/