The Dreaded Resealable Vinyl Sleeves

If you’ve done any record shopping at all, you’ve surely noticed that most used records are protected by a transparent record sleeve. Perhaps not the dozens of ring-worn copies of B.J. Thomas, Barbara Streisand and Barry Manilow, but any record worth more than $10 is likely covered in some fashion (and please note that I’m not knocking any of those artists – it’s just that their records are, well…plentiful).

In most stores, records are stored in a certain way:

1)      The records themselves are front-facing for ease of flipping.

2)      They are housed in plastic outer sleeves whose open ends are pointed towards the album cover openings (apparently called a “cover mouth.” I just learned something!).

3)      The inner sleeves that house the record itself are also pointed toward the cover mouth, allowing would-be buyers to extract the vinyl record without any unnecessary steps.

Some albums don’t play nice with this storage – Elton John’s Honky Chateau comes to mind – but for most part, this type of format works well, and as a guy who buys a fair number of records each year, I’ve grown accustomed to this protocol.

But more and more lately, I’ve had the misfortune of perusing used records that are housed in resealable sleeves, the kind that fold over and adhere like a Post-It note, leaving the album cover completely encased – even the opening that houses the inner sleeve and record. This obviously makes checking the record quality tedious, because I have to peel back the sticky fold of the outer sleeve to extract the record, and if I’m thumbing through a couple hundred items, it makes for a cumbersome visit and an unhappy camper.

Some stores go to even greater lengths to spoil my record-buying outing, turning a potential customer into a sworn enemy. Outside of Phoenix, one particular establishment (who shall remain nameless) turns a record quality check into about a minute-long ordeal on the front end, and then another minute-long ordeal on the back end. To wit:

1)      The records are stored in resealable sleeves. My happy disposition is already marred.

2)      These resealable sleeves are pointed north so that the “cover mouth” isn’t exposed even after opening the outer sleeve. Because of this, the album cover has to be completely extracted from the outer sleeve.  Now I’m starting to mutter a few obscenities.

3)      This store takes things a step further: the inner sleeve is also pointing north, meaning I can’t take out the vinyl without first slipping the entire inner sleeve out of the record cover. By this point I’m giving the stink eye to the poor clerk at the cash register, and she probably has nothing to do with this madness!

4)      Once the record is freed from this insanity, I hold it between my hands and tilt it from side to side. And wouldn’t you know it? This particular copy of Working Class Dog by Rick Springfield is marked up beyond any reasonable collector’s threshold, and by this point I’m fuming, because…

5)      I now have to reverse the process to put the album back the way I found it!

I certainly wasn’t going to go through this procedure again and again. I walked out empty-handed and spent my money elsewhere.

I’ve been told by my friend and podcast partner Chris that if a store is going to use resealable sleeves, an accurate grade of the record should be marked on a sticker so that the buyer knows what he or she is getting. But even then I’m skeptical, because I want to see what I’m buying, and not every grading system is consistent.

Sure, if you own a record store and have a mint copy of Prince’s Black Album, go ahead – put it inside a resealable sleeve. In fact, put it in a safe and just display a photo of the record for interested parties! But for most merchandise in the $10 to $250 range, please do us all a favor and stick to the protocols that make record-buying a joyful experience.

Build Your Own Record Rack - repost

(NOTE: this is a repost from June 15, 2020, but I wanted to reintroduce this topic as a companion to a discussion from this week’s episode of 1000 Greatest Misses, a podcast I host with Christopher Grey. If you own vinyl, this may be right up your alley).

I’m not a naturally handy guy, but over the years I’ve managed to take on some modest home improvement projects with a degree of success, mostly the result of YouTube videos and frantic emails to my exceptionally handy friend, Rick.  Last March when it became apparent that the pandemic would result in a lot of unwanted time at home, I decided to overcome my typical trepidation and take on a new project, one I’d been grappling with for some time:  building a few shelving units to store my growing collection of vinyl records.  I’d been searching for a replacement of my plastic-bins-scattered-around-the-basement approach for quite some time, but nothing on the market satisfied my three criteria:  forward facing, attractive and inexpensive. 

Enter, the Google search.  Actually enter dozens of Google searches. And lo and behold, several pages deep into one of my explorations, I came upon a marvelous blog post called “I Built a DIY Vinyl Record Shelf, And you Can Too!”  This sounded right up my alley.  The post was over seven years old, but the concept was timeless:  build a great-looking unit that holds around 500 records with one sheet of 8x4 plywood.  Fantastic.

The author of the blog got his idea from what is now a decade-long thread on AudioKarma, a website I’d never heard before but whose entry is a treasure trove of information from dozens of helpful contributors.  It all started with a great concept and has since evolved to include every possible variation you can imagine, with multiple draft designs that accommodate different needs.  If you’re interested in building your own rack, I strongly encourage you to read the entire thread before you begin.  I did not, and wish I had.  It may take you several hours, but it’ll help you determine in advance which features are important to you and which design works best.  Had I read these comments in full I would have avoided a few mistakes along the way.  As it is, I built two identical racks, and then a third of my own design that includes record storage on the bottom and bays for a receiver and turntable on top.  None of my three projects went perfectly, and my lack of craftsmanship certainly reared its ugly head from time to time, but I learned a lot about woodworking and ultimately made decent-looking alternatives to the plastic bins I’d been using for years.

Along with screws, glue, casters, sandpaper, and polyurethane, lights, etc., I figure each unite costs somewhere around $100.   Not too shabby!

Above: records will fill the bottom eventually. Far left: speaker stands that I built to practice using a pocket hole jig. Left: extra support for the bottom shelf.

Here are a few things you may find helpful:

1)     Beware cutting your plywood at the store.  The guys at Home Depot were well-meaning, but their cuts of my red oak plywood (around $53) with a dull an imprecise cutting tool ended up shredding my wood something fierce.  It took a lot of energy and frustration to work around the most dreadful-looking cuts.  If you have a friend with a truck or a van, consider doing this at home.

2)     Buy or build a square jig to hold your plywood together at right angles.  I built one very similar to the one in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPA8FDTcfcE

3)     Get a table saw or borrow one.  I did not and it showed, because even though I used a guide with my circular saw, I was never able to make my cuts absolutely perfect, resulting in slight gaps and mismeasurements that affected the final project.  I’m still happy with my units, but they could have been a bit better. 

4)     Since being able to move your record rack once it’s filled with records is key, definitely include casters in your design.  I purchased reasonably-priced 90-pound casters from Home Depot and they work fine.  Don’t forget to include a few that swivel and lock.

5)     Use a counter sink to hide your screws or use a pocket hole jig.  I did the former from the first two racks I built and pocket holes for the third unit along with a set of speaker stands I built (these actually turned out the best of all of my work).  I loved using my Kreg Pocket Hold Jig 320 and will find new uses for it in upcoming projects I’m sure.

6)     Use wood glue for all of your wood joints.

7)     Buy a bunch of clamps, including a few trigger clamps for ease of use and a few clamps that are long enough to accommodate your record bin.  I think mine are 48 inches, and they were hugely helpful.

8)     Consider adding supports for the shelves.  Records weight a lot, and though it might not have been necessary, I did add a cross-bar support for the lower shelf and perimeter supports for the top shelf.   If nothing else, they give me peace of mind.

9)     Be especially careful with the top shelf as this is the most visible.  On the last rack I made that’s housing a turntable on top, I ended up with gaps along the edges that required the use of wood putty, and it looks pretty bad.  So bad, in fact, that I decided to purchase a bunch of rock band stickers from RedBubble to hide my work!  I love the stickers, but they were not part of the original design.

10)  Which reminds me, consider decorating your racks with stickers!  This was a helluva lot of fun, and it requires no carpentry skills.

11)  If you don’t want to stain, don’t.  I personally hate using stain because I never like the way it turns out – just another one of those handyman skills I haven’t yet mastered.  I kept my red oak plywood bare and used three coats of polyurethane to protect it and give it a bit of a sheen.  Looks great.

12)  Don’t fret so much about how to best apply polyurethane.  I stressed out about this because everyone had an opinion and almost none of them were consistent.  Put a few coats on, sand lightly, put another coat on, and you’re good to go.  It’s just polyurethane.  It’s not life and death.

13)  Consider using real wood iron-on veneer.  I had no idea this product existed, but it’s another one of those great tidbits offered by the AudioKarma gang.  It’s an absolute bitch to work with in my opinion because it’s wider than the edge of the plywood and therefore needs to be trimmed.  Nothing I used – a trimmer designed specifically for this task or just good old sandpaper – worked well.  It either just folded the veneer or disrupted it enough to lift it off the plywood despite the adhesive.  I eventually got the job done and it looks great, but it was an unpleasant process. 

14)  Install LED lights for the bottom racks or your records are going to be hard to see.  This part of the project was easy!  I purchased these stick-on lights from Amazon and they work great. 

15)  Use record dividers for a professional look.  There are a bunch of options out there, mostly overpriced or formatted incorrectly, but I like the option I found at Amazon along with a white ink Sharpie.

I’m probably missing a few additional pieces of advice, but by scanning the AudioKarma thread you will have a lot of great ideas that people of shared over the years.  Happy building!

An Ode to Compact Discs

Just a few weeks after I touted the benefits of owning physical LPs, author and journalist Rob Sheffield writes in Rolling Stone this week about the resurgence of one of the most assailed forms of music media: the compact disc. The redheaded stepchild of music formats, Neil Young has equated listening to digitized music to sensory deprivation and torture. Ouch!

But while I’ve never understood store-bought cassettes, even back in their hey-day and especially today as they make a perplexing comeback in used record stores, I totally get why CDs are still a thing, Neil Young’s assertions aside. As Sheffield writes: “Compact discs were never about romance — they were about function.”

I and most other music connoisseurs spent years in the 2000s converting their CDs to easily stored MP3 files for use in iPods and the like, but unlike many, I stopped short of actually removing the physical products from my home. Thank goodness, because I really do like having physical CDs to play, especially when I’m driving in my Mazda, which will unfortunately likely be the last car I’ll ever own that’s equipped with a CD player. I still own the 400 or so that I amassed over the years, including my first purchases from 1986, and I still kick myself for having sold or gotten rid of around fifty CDs back in the 2000s. There’s still something alluring about playing a CD in its entirety, uninterrupted. In terms of functionality coupled with pretty damn-good quality, CDs can’t be beat.

Unless you consider streaming, which – let’s face it – wins in the functionality department and can sound pretty great if you want it to, but Sheffield echoes (and states more eloquently) some of the same arguments I made last week about streaming. He writes:

“…streaming is not a ‘place,’ but a barrage of constant options that many fans find less optimal when you’re in the mood to actually concentrate and listen. You’re probably also streaming on a device that’s nagging you about messages you need to answer right now.”

It’s the same premise that people have made all along: that there may simply be something very human about the need for tactile interaction with one’s environment, and in a culture that’s downgraded music and other media to something disposable, it’s natural that the pendulum would slowly shift toward owning physical products. CDs aren’t perfect, but they at least include liner notes and cover art. As if that’s not enough enticement, I saw scores of them at a used furniture sale last week for 25 cents apiece!

And for all you vinyl purists who lean toward environmental causes, Sheffield notes that for all the hubbub people threw at record companies for housing CDs in grotesque longboxes back in the 80s and 90s, “…the tables have turned – now if you buy an LP online, it’s shipped in a package that’s basically six longboxes.” 

Well played.

For those who aren’t familiar with Sheffield, he’s a hell of a writer, and among music geeks is revered alongside other venerated music-themed artists such as author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) and filmmaker John Carney (Once, Begin Again, Sing Street). Sheffield resonates to a certain type of person: often male, semi music-obsessed, a bit insecure, and one who occasionally likes to bathe luxuriously in his own heartache. His books Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls about Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes are mainstays for many music nerds. I highly recommend each of them.

Is Collecting Vinyl Pretentious?

Last week Katie Edwards of the Independent had a little fun with a provocative essay on how pointless ownings records is. She writes from the viewpoint of a fed-up wife whose vinyl-collecting husband has taken over a third of her dining room. To which I say, “Hey, at least it’s not half.”

But seriously, I think Edwards was writing partly for the thrill of poking the bear, knowing that geeky audiophiles would blow a gasket, because midway through her essay she actually answers her own question of why people purchase vinyl. She writes, “Perhaps it’s the experience of vinyl that’s the clincher? The same way I like to hold a physical copy of a book and turn actual pages rather than read an electronic version.”

I can’t speak for all vinyl collectors, but for me, that’s it, exactly. I’ve never bought into the claim that vinyl sounds better than other formats. I’ve also never owned records that I’m reluctant to play – as Edwards’s husband apparently is – for fear that they’ll get damaged. And I don’t eschew streaming music; according to Spotify, I streamed over 139 hours of music in 2021, 55% more than the average Spotify listener.

But streaming doesn’t just make music portable, it also makes it disposable. I’ve invested nothing into downloading the latest Sammy Rae EP (but you should do so – she’s amazing!). Not money. Not time. Not changing the dial on the radio. Worse, I don’t know who plays on her album, who produced it, where it was recorded or who wrote the songs. Her songs exist in the ether, as if they just appeared one day through no effort of gifted musicians. Vinyl and other physical formats force the listener to reckon with the music, to establish a relationship with it, and to devote physical space to it.

Katie Edwards concedes all of this, but then wonders if the real reason people buy vinyl is to flaunt their tastes over those whose musical knowledge they consider pedestrian. Edwards writes, “Having a showy collection of vinyl – that owners have to pull out and parade in front of uninterested guests stifling yawns – is a display of pretentiousness that turns me right off.”  She also writes, “ I just can’t be bothered with the inevitable scoffing by self-described music buffs who consider themselves authorities on taste just because they’ve got a couple of obscure LPs.”

Okay, I cry bullshit here. If she actually has friends who’ve scoffed at her musical tastes, then she needs to find new friends. More likely, I think Edwards is writing to provocate (as she apparently did me!). Either that or she’s projecting her own insecurities on her music-loving friends, the same way any insecure person might do to describe any other human endeavor.

For example, I have a friend who has a very impressive wine cellar in his basement and likes to present good bottles of wine for gatherings. I don’t really know anything about wine except that I like to drink it. Now, I could be intimidated by this and accuse my friend of arrogance, but really – I just think it’s cool. He’s into something I’m not into. I have no aspirations of becoming a wine aficionado, but I’m glad he is, and I’m happy to ask a few questions so that he can share his enthusiasm with me. The next time he comes over to my house, I will have no problems opening up a $12 bottle of cabernet. I don’t think he’ll judge me for it. I think he’ll ask for a glass.

Similarly, Edwards should have no problem streaming the Heart song “Alone” for her friends, as she claims she’s reluctant to do. If they truly look down on her as a result, then shame on them.

But methinks she doth protest too much. She must know that “Alone” blows.

Ha, I actually like that song. Two can play this provocation game!

What we keep. What we discard.

It’s been a while, but I’ll start knocking out blogs on a more regular basis in the months ahead. There are a lot of things percolating in my head that need an outlet, and one just came to light this morning as I read two articles in The New York Times about collecting – or discarding – stuff. 

I’ve written about this topic before. In fact, one of my first blogs (July of 2010!) was about my “saver” father and my “discarder” mom, and how these two diametrically opposed characteristics shaped me into the person I am today. Since the pandemic started nearly two years ago, there have been many articles written about decluttering and how it can improve people’s lives. After all, clutter has been shown to increase anxiety, put strain on familial relationships, affect sleeping habits, ruin household incomes, and the like. But discarding possessions also carries an emotional burden. My father and my wife’s mother are both contending with discarding in fairly short order that which they spent a lifetime accumulating, and it can be an overwhelming process: it’s hard to know where to begin, hard to know how to part with something that you feel defines you or is a part of the grand narrative of your life’s story, and on a more practical level, it’s not often apparent what to actually do with the stuff one’s chosen to discard. Who’ll take the collection of fishing lures? The seashells? The artwork? The National Geographic magazines? Should you just throw them out? You can’t, can you? After all the care you’ve given these objects for so many years?

Sadly, a dumpster or recycling bin is where a lot of our stuff will go – whether it’s before we die or after – and I imagine that this realization gives us visceral feeling of our own mortality, recognition that all that we’ve accumulated will be gone when we are gone, that most of what we leave behind is people’s memories of our existence, and that in a generation or two, even that will be gone. We will have never existed.

Weighty stuff!

But dang, I love that collectors exist. I need then to exist, even if it means that they lead stressful lives because of it. I love that the pandemic inspired Iowan barber Brian Hogan to build a video rental store in his basement! I love that there are record stores and vintage clothing stores, and that my friend has a collection of tickets stubs and signed programs and photos of the concerts he’s attended over the decades. I love that another friend of mine recently purchased an antique Coke vending machine to accompany his jukebox of 45 rpm records. I love that I have a program, pennant and tickets stubs from the 1957 World Series hanging on my wall. I love that my paternal grandfather saved so much stuff that I could practically write a novel about his live in the 1920s. I had to discard much of what he saved, but I kept enough. Enough to have an idea of what his life was like, what he was like.

In 2012, I quoted Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut about how views on possessions change over time, and what was once cherished garners nothing more but indifference later in life.  This is likely the natural order of things. 

I’m not quite there yet. The pandemic forced me to go through some items, and while I was happy to discard clothing, storage bins, framed artwork and old furniture, the stuff I’m keeping – the record albums, the photographs, books, letters, memories of my children – this stuff I’m holding onto with gusto. This stuff is a manifestation of who I am. My kids may hate me for it. Their kids may one day hate me for it.  But for now these possessions still define me. There may be a day when that changes, when I can freely discard what I own without – as Rabbi Plaut wrote – an ounce of regret. But if my father is any indication, that ain’t gonna happen!

And I may one day take a cue from Brian Hogan and open a record rental store in my basement.