77 Wars

we search and dig and pray for delivery. we pay homage at our belt- or direct-drive altars. we attempt to rendezvous with our scrolls, sometimes at any cost, even if it means having them shipped from japan or france. and is it worth it?

you’re damned right it is.

in ways it is better and worse than being a junkie. of course, sometimes it feels exactly like what i would imagine being a junkie feels like. just over a month ago i came across sepultura’s album ‘chaos a.d.‘ at amoeba, it was a 180 gram re-issue from roadrunner records. i still have unpaid bills nagging me, but i had to spend the 20 bucks on that one, not knowing if i’d see it again. it has been one of my favorite records since high school and i hadn’t actually listened to it in a long time because my cd copy is pretty scratched up.

unlike a junkie, though, i brought it home and placed it with my other records and i didn’t listen to it until yesterday. in this way, it was a religious experience for me. i wasn’t feeling ready to listen to it, so i set it aside. and then yesterday with no particular reason or much excitement i unwrapped the record, cleaned my turntable, beat the dust out of my slipmat, carefully set the record on the platter, hit the start button and then gently put the needle down on the outside edge of the record. i just knew it was time… and that record sounded better than i had remembered.

my best friend, ben, will sit at home sometimes in his chair, smoking his hookah with a flavored tobacco, listening to records with his eyes closed. i spend time like this at home, meditating on the music, only listening and noting all of the individual sounds, sometimes hearing an instrument that i hadn’t noticed before in the background or doubling on a vocal. sometimes we hang out together and just listen to records.

occasionally i go out and i see some guy dj’ing on his ipods and i am completely put off. there is something so wrong about it to me. it’s just probably that at 30, i’m already old in a lot of ways. i’m probably going to get a new job next week and i kind of hate that i’m going to need to get one of those e-mail phones, some kind of blackberry or sidekick or something. to have to search and sweat to find a record is so gratifying to me. when i see a guy putting on a record, i know that it’s pretty much certain that he really gives a shit about that record. when some other guy pushes a button to play a track he might not even know the name of, it just doesn’t inspire me to listen (not to mention the compression issue).

as is the case, i imagine, amongst jesus’ faithful and the junkies, there is usually a sense of brotherhood. vinyl collectors share an uncommon passion for music, even when they like really shitty music. when i find a certain record, sometimes i have to call up ben or jason to tell them or i’ll ask if they want me to pick up this copy of something i thought they were looking for. and it feels great to be walking down the street and answer my phone and hear ben tell me that he ordered 2 copies of the new sunn/boris lp from southern lord records, one for me, because he was sure that i’d want to buy one.

last night, my friend jason and i were out playing records at this bar in downtown. sometimes he’ll play a record, let’s just say the kinks, and then i’ll play a van halen cover of a kinks song. or we’ll try to play records from the same producer or bands that share members or have a similar name. and you gotta look at the record, see how much time you have and then find the next one to play… thinking, maybe of the theme you were working on or a song that has the same drum beat but you just can’t remember what band it is. it’s these types of things that digital dj’s don’t seem to have going on. maybe i hate it because i just can’t imagine having any fun playing between two ipods.

but looking through all three or four thousand records in the rock section at amoeba? that i can do. err, have done. and it’s great.

anyways, i’m typing into an online publishing program as i rant about hating new technology. but, fuck it, i can embrace and hate it all at the same time. now… i’m gonna go put that sepultura record on again.