Antiquated Schmantiquated †Keep the Records Coming :: Personal Narrative Writing

Antiquated Schmantiquated – Keep the Records Coming I get by because of the people who make a special effort to shop here Saturdays†¦young men who seem to spend a disproportionate amount of their time looking for deleted Smiths singles and â€Å"ORIGINAL NOT RERELEASED† underlined Frank Zappa albums. ~Nick Hornby, High Fidelity As I walked into Second Coming Records in Cambridge, Massachusetts on a cloudy, humid June afternoon I was thrilled to find that one of the guys behind the counter had put on an album by the Vibrators, a band I adore. I excitedly told my older brother Jeff, whom I was visiting, about how they had played in State College twice, how I had been in the front row at both shows, and especially how I got to hang out with the band at a party after the second show. Jeff didn’t seem to really appreciate the fact that I’d hung out with a band that had shared a stage with the Sex Pistols. Nevertheless, I was inspired to see what Second Coming’s Vibrators section contained. I still had some cash left from my very recent twenty-first birthday and I was ready to spend it. I located the white plastic separator in the V section with â€Å"The Vibrators† handwritten on it and began to flip through the records, each protected by a clear plastic sleeve. I was surprised to come upon a copy of Pure Mania, their first LP. I had been looking for a good vinyl copy of this for about a year. The price sticker was marked $19.99 and I wondered why a used record was priced so high. I carefully removed the record itself from its sleeve and angled the black shiny vinyl so that the inadequate overhead lighting fell at just the right angle across the disk. Etched into the vinyl on the border of the label I found what I was looking for: 1A (records are marked with different codes to identify each successive pressing). An original, first-pressing Pure Mania! This was more than I had hoped for. Still, twenty bucks was something to think about. I examined the surface of the record, checking for any scratches or warping that would infringe on the playing. It appeared nearly perfect. I ended up buying that record, and that day I spent over six hours and two hundred dollars shopping for records. I’m considered to be a lightweight by many.