Analog Media Arts

This weekend, my roommate and I drove about an hour and fifteen minutes up to a country road near La Grange, Indiana. We stopped at an old house with a 1960's Alice Chambers combine sitting to one side of a large open garage; we got out and said hello to JR. Through the sixty or so years JR has spent on this earth (the majority of which in Indiana) he's done many different things, including installing those huge rubber seals you see at semi bays. That Saturday, however, he was selling us 700+ vinyl records and 300+ cassette tapes for $100.

I found the lot on Craigslist listed for $120 and figured my roommate and I could make some extra money reselling them, since neither of us has jobs. I Emailed JR and found out the collection had belonged to a former DJ who had been renting a property from him and was evicted. I asked JR if he would settle for $100; he said yes and gave me his address, and I told him I'd see him at 11:00 on Saturday.

700 records is a large amount of records, combined with the 500 or so cassettes, they take up a lot of space in our dorm room. I'm not a collector of records myself, but I know a lot of people really enjoy them, my father has a pretty extensive collection leftover from when vinyl was just what you bought to listen to music. In an age when digital media prevails, there's something kind of magical about the analog nature of things like vinyl and cassette. I don't get as excited about them as some, but I can certainly appreciate the connection created between the art and the listener when placing the needle on the edge of the inky black vinyl.

In related news, if you're interested, I'm selling records.