Biiig Music

Today I received my gift for my investment in a Patreon project for a long-beloved but semi-defunct band named Caedmon's Call. They did write mostly for the Christian music market, but the primary songwriters had a telling gift for imagery and ideas that had wide appeal. Recently, for an anniversary of their initial album, they decided to reunite and re-record it. Through Patreon they offered several different gifts to help fund the project. My choice included, among other things, a vinyl double album of the release.

I'm not the guy to tell you that vinyl is superior to a CD. For one, I'm not sure there's that much difference and for another, too many loud shows in too many small clubs make sure I'll never hear whatever difference there might be. There's also the way vinyl records were pressed as CD sales rose. The records themselves became thinner and thinner -- cut a hole in the middle of one and glue it to the bottom of a top hat and you could set yourself up as Oddjob forthwith. I sold my collection about 15 years ago because I move too often and I owned about 700 heavy albums. I just kept a few and have added the odd title here and there.

The album I was sent today is a double album, gatefold cover. It's a big old chunk of memory. The ginormous photos, compared to a CD cover or worse, a digital music thumbnail. Checking out which disc is the first half and which is the second. Sliding it into place among some other remaining albums. All things that take me back to a world where cassettes were OK for cars and 8-tracks had their day, but if you wanted to listen to music the right way, you laid it on a spinning platter, cued up the needle and let it play.

Here's hoping Caedmon's Call does their second album the same way -- the first one is good but the second was my favorite. Either way, this evening sounds real, real good.