Let me preface this by saying that, yes, I know it’s unfashionable and antiquated, but I love playing vinyl.
I’ve still never played a CD in a club and still (*gasp*) pay money to cut dubplates.
Why is this? Many reasons…
I like holding what I play, and I like seeing the grooves..and all that usual stuff that dinosaurs like me blabber on about. I like the fact that spending money on cutting a plate of a tune makes me think really carefully about what I want to play, and how much I want to invest in supporting a tune. I like the feel of my record bag… I don’t mind that it’s heavy, it’s become almost like a pet to me. It keeps me company at airports and train stations, and lets me sit on it when I need to.
I like the associations pretty much all my records have with various places and times, and I like the scars they pick up along the way at gigs. Even if they become unplayable I never get rid of them..In fact I especially don’t get rid of them if that happens; they’re more likely to get elevated to the hall of heroes in my collection. ‘Those who gave their lives so that we may live..’ etc..
I like frantically heaving my records on and off the decks, and the booth area filling up with vinyl when I don’t have time to put them back in their sleeves. It’s chaotic, it’s ridiculous and it’s all very very human.
So it’s a shame that I realise that at many of our gigs in recent times there has been some problem or other with the decks. Usually to do with imperfect needles, or records jumping. I guess this is no surprise, as less and less people play vinyl, and so are less likely to notice any problems. This coupled with deck maintenance sliding fast down a club’s priority list means that the problems associated with playing vinyl are growing exponentially. Yes, of course we soundcheck, and yes, of course we request proper set-ups before the show happens…but out here in the real world problems often show themselves once it’s too late to do anything about it.
It’s a stark choice facing those of us who still like to play vinyl. Do we turn up and grit our teeth, try and turn in the best technical performance we can even though the set-up may be leagued against us? It may mean substandard mixing, and may often mean that we can’t play the tunes we have cut, (as plates are more sensitive to jumping than vinyl, especially as they get a bit older)…all of which is, at best, unsatisfying and at worst, embarrassing. Not to mention unfair to the people who have paid money to come and hear you play.
Personally, I don’t give a damn what people choose to mix their music. I’m only a purist insofar as my own preferences go. CD, laptop, vinyl, memory sticks; whatever…It’s all fine by me, but I don’t like the feeling that I’m being forced out of the thing that I enjoy playing and into another medium.
But whatevs…There’s not much I can do to influence this, it’s up to the promoters and clubs. If everyone is happy with DJs finally doing away with vinyl once and for all, (and that may well be the majority decision, in which case I’ll have to accept it), then carry on and force us to switch to CDs & laptops.
But if, like me, you love vinyl, and love playing with vinyl then please, check the Technics one last time before the party starts.
To be continued…
No related posts.
mistabishi tbh
How do I make my 1210s lens flare like that in the club?
Great txt!!!
I totally TOTALLY agree.
Thank you for posting this.
safe.
Good read.
Yeh i’ve had similar probs regarding needles, decks not set up etc.
Unfortunately its become a re-occuring trend ive noticed and predicted happening whilst working in a vinyl shop & DJing out so I always try to make sure the promoter has the equipment sorted before hand.
…I reminisce on the days of buying a travelcard and visiting all the record shops one by one to find THAT gem. That’s what ‘hurts’ (for want of a better word) i suppose, the ease of it all… it doesnt take much effort to be a DJ these days and it does make me wonder why i spent 15+ years of my life collecting vinyl and trying to perfect my craft (lol?).
Turntables are little more than CD rests these days and when I see that lack of respect it does hurt!
However i’ve always been a gadget fiend and have kept up with the latest technological developments so i’ve always incorporated both in my sets.
For the vinyl lovers I suggest always carrying a fresh pair of needles with you!
Even 10 years ago we used to take our own carts and needles to gigs as a back up, deck setups were often rubbish even back then.
Maybe if the Digital Vinyl thing wins out over CD then clubs/promoters will have to move deck repair back up their priority list. It might not be for the right reasons but the job gets done.
I am a soldier for “stop the war on vinyl” and i only use vinyl to play.
But sometimes i get angry when good tracks are not available on vinyl.
And a dubplate is a little bit too expensive for me here in germany.
So i hope that “starting all over” will see the black gold sometime. Would love to play that.
My fav on your great album.
Thanks for that…
and thanks for keeping vinyl alive….
Regards
Imho, any selfrespecting club should have it’s decks in check. Although, in all due honesty and experience, turntables have a tendency to be a wee bit more sensitve and can crap out mid-mix.
Some problems can be found during a soundcheck and some problems will rear it’s head when the venue is packed and moisture and heat rise.
Back when we were still doing nights we usually had a backup TT close by and had our booth set up to quickly switch if needed.
But it’s a mixed bag, and i guess bringing your own needles is fixing a maximum of 50% of the potential problems.
I remember one big name dj saying “makes it feel like work” with a huge smile when i helped him with his dub-laden recordbag. A quote I happily repeated carrying my own recordcase every so often.
However i’m a practical person and cd’s win for me in practicality right now.
Main ones being: my local record store doesn’t stock dnb vinyl (I prefer to physically buy than to mailorder, and those within an hour of traveling stock so little the cool stuff is sold out), cost and maybe strangely enough, i trust the DAC’s of a set of CDJ’s more than those on the bundled cards on digital vinyl packages.
However, i would probably trade it in for the romanticism of going to a store, check out the latest records and promo’s and coming back with a kilo or more of new records to play. Enjoying the artwork and scribbling on the inner circles of my promos.
^ lol ive defaced many a rare vinyl that way
It’s the same story in my neck of the woods. I’m now the only vinyl DJ in my home town as far as I know, and I always have to bring my own decks.
I love vinyl though – always will do
Honest… also, I was always wondering… do you guys (and by that I mean all the big djs in the war, docscott, london e, etc…) get annoyed when you don’t get 1200s or 1210s in a club? :S
YES!
great post.
big up!!!!!!!
support your local record store.
if you don’t collect vinyl, girls won’t want to touch your special spot…. you heard it here first….
Great post. I personally think what I miss the most about the supposed “death on vinyl” is how much fun it used to be to go down to the record stores, shoot the shit with friends and have good chats about music, etc.
Nowadays I prefer buying a 2-3 records and then downloading 10-12 wavs from Beatport each week. This especially true with a lot of the house and baltimore club music I buy as very little of that is even released on wax these days.
I’m a big proponent of technology, but still get that same nostalgic feel receiving a record in the post that I used to get when my folks would give me one when I was little. I can easily live without vinyl if I had to, but the hard part would be to forgo the novelty and nostalgia of it and the anticipation of waiting to receive it in the mail. Something gets lost in the instant gratification of just downloading a song off the web…yet I still need a way to keep my iPod filled with fresh music!
“I like holding what I play, and I like seeing the grooves..”
… and I like the impression of continousness the turning vinyls provide
And yet you limit your new album on vinyl to 500 copies globally. Interesting…
not sure what that has to do with this ^
@ blu mar ten: you should bring your own cartridges when playing somewhere. seriously. then you know what you’re dealing with at least in regard to the needles. take sure m44-7, they sound better than ortofon standards AND need less weight, hence don’t wear out the vinyl too badly. ask turntablists.
@ vinyllover: there are not more people anymore whop buy it.. pressing 3000 makes no sense when even established names on big labels sell only 500 units.
“I like the fact that spending money on cutting a plate of a tune makes me think really carefully about what I want to play, and how much I want to invest in supporting a tune.”
Amen. There isn’t enough of this, with the proliferation of digital media. Djing needs more soul these days!
I only got into DJing a year ago (and so am not of the ‘vinyl is the only way to go’ old skool persuasion), but as a poor student there’s no way I could afford even one CDJ, so I got a nice deal on a pair of second hand 1200s. And I’ve got to say – I’m so glad I was forced to go for vinyl only!
Collecting the records, being forced through financial constraints to only buy a few records a month and so having to choose carefully – it makes the whole thing so much more fun. When you bring home some 12″, or receive them through the post, it’s so much more exciting than just downloading another mp3.
I wouldn’t know about all the annoying sides of playing vinyl in a club, having never played out, but speaking as a bedroom DJ slowly building up a collection, I really think vinyl makes the whole thing so much more interesting. While not being able to get all the tunes you might want (no way am I shelling out for dubplates) is frustrating, it does make things more of a challenge, and more rewarding.
I run DNB parties in Hong Kong and have switched to cd because we have no shops out in Asia. It’s too expensive to order from the UK.
However, vinyl has re-sale value. MP3s do not.
Also, I miss the artwork on the 12inch sleeves. I used to plan sets based on which sleeves contained which sounds. Now that’s all gone. Who’s ever gotten drunk and lefttheir unmarked CDs laying around.
Artwork is a major culture loss in the DJ world with mp3s
@hatik – Those m44-7’s would eat a dubplate in no time. lol.
November 16th, 2009 11:09 pm
And yet you limit your new album on vinyl to 500 copies globally. Interesting…
November 17th, 2009 12:16 am
not sure what that has to do with this ^
he probably saved about 50 and is slowly gonna resell them on ebay in a couple of years xD
also, at the non technics… I didn’t get the fuss, and I was fine DJing on non technics… until I tried technics xD but do you even get that anywhere? lol cheap ass clubs which spare on decks? x)
@ Magda O!: on what do you base this assumption?
i have made nothing but good experiences with them.
whatever dude
@Magda: you’re wrong there. M44’s don’t destroy wax as quick as Ortofons do, because they were designed for this – to be able to scratch records longer, even though i wouldn’t agree with @hatik either about the “sounding better than Ortofons”, since the sound quality is exactly where they lose when they gain more in ability not to wear off the records… and this is exactly why there’s still no perfect needles out there – whether you get this or that, so it all depends on a situation where you wanna use them and which properties do you require more in the given situation
anyways, good read.. @BMT: i must say i agree, although like somebody here already said – the bad setup problems existed even 15 years ago, so at least spare needles is a must
and btw, was a nice set last week in Estonia, some good old tunes and nice to see some people still play on vinyl these days.. coz all i see these days, most of the major djs come with cds and only which is sad and boring. so i hope you’ll be able to keep it up no matter what technology says 
vinyl for life…
Nice write up with some seriously valid points. Although I’ve always said vinyl forever, I think everyone sees an unavoidable shift toward digital taking place.
I still do what I can buy ordering vinyl exclusively, but it makes it hard when producers choose to cut tracks from the vinyl release that they include on the CD release. (Disclaimer: I will buying Natural History on both vinyl and CD – just so I can have By The Time My Light Reaches You I’ll Be Gone.)
@Drew
>> it makes it hard when producers choose to cut tracks from the vinyl release that they include on the CD release. <<
With respect to an independently funded and released DnB album today, I don’t think it’s fair to say, as you have, that there is a choice made by the artist to ‘cut tracks’ out, which is clearly to imply that none have to be.
ithinkitsnice: I see what you mean. Perhaps the wording of “cut tracks out” wasn’t the best choice in this context.
I should have said something to the effect of “It makes it hard when the CD release has additional tracks which the vinyl release doesn’t.”
“I should have said something to the effect of “It makes it hard when the CD release has additional tracks which the vinyl release doesn’t.””
This is an interesting point. I’ve spent my life savings thrice-fold on vinyl throughout my life, and I’d do it again to have all the right tracks. When this kind of situation arises, it begs the question: would a label be able to justify the extra effort/costs to sell the vinyl? I think the answer is yes, considering all the $20-$100 gems on discogs these days. Then again, I’m biased and want vinyl to survive
Same point, in another case: Hospital’s ‘Sick Music’ Ep. I bought it digitally for cheap. I’d have gladly paid full price (10 bucks/plate) for the whole release on vinyl, but sadly the vinyl release didn’t have all the tracks.
Marcial: I’m right there with you. I would’ve gladly paid more for all the tracks on vinyl. Although I live pretty modestly, price is not an object to me when it comes to vinyl.
However, as you mentioned, it’s more of a decision on the label’s part – it seems that they are the ones who have to (at least initially) eat up a lot of the production and distribution costs. Hard to say if others beyond you and myself would be willing to pay $50-100 for a “full” album release on vinyl with 1 track per side.
Beautifully written. I hope this insight is shared and spread amongst those who love and even those whom have disregarded dubplate culture; maybe the insurgence will prove to skeptics that cutting, pressing and playing acetate in the clubs is a pleasure that still lives among djs. The show was lovely last night; a true honour chatting with you!
There with you. Love the feel smell of vinyl, love looking at the turntables, love the crackle and the thud when you drop and needle. I have bought a couple of CDs in the last 5 years, but a couple of records every week.
PEACE
“I like the fact that spending money on cutting a plate of a tune makes me think really carefully about what I want to play, and how much I want to invest in supporting a tune.”
-Yes! Quality control is the #1 victim of digital djing. It’s a good design process to have to really choose carefully what tunes are worth buying on vinyl/cutting to plate.
Any recommendations on where I should get dub plates cut? Never had any cut before. Want to cut a couple. Thanks