Monologue: You Should Get Into Vinyl

This is an iHeart podcast.

On Fox One, you can stream your favorite news, sports, and entertainment live, all in one app.

It's fing roll and unfiltered.

This is the best thing ever.

Watch breaking news as it breaks.

Breaking tonight, we're following two major stories.

And catch history in the making.

Gibby, meet Freddy.

Debates,

drama, touchdowns.

It's all here, baby.

Fox One.

We live for live.

Streaming now.

Coolzone Media.

Hello and welcome to your weekly Better Offline monologue.

I, of course, am Ed Zitron.

And this week I'm going to be talking about something completely analog.

Vinyl.

Okay, it's not completely analog.

There's some electricity.

Anyway, now, some of you might have paid attention to how I've been talking the last few months about my mental health journey and all that shit.

And a big part of feeling better about myself has been finding ways to relax.

I'm not like a lot of people.

So I've had to, I have to teach myself things.

I really have to sit down and say, like, look, Ed, you're going to try and work out what relaxing feels like.

And I've literally had to teach myself.

And I'm getting close.

And a lot of this has been about returning to older music and letting things just kind of play instead of pecking around.

So the older music in questions like Joe Cocker, Charles Mingus, Lee Morgan, Derondo, Van Morrison.

And as part of this, I decided to get into vinyl because I was walking around with my dear friend Tori Elliott Wired and she said, we're going to go on a field trip.

And I said, I don't like change.

Where are we going?

She took me to Music City Inn in New York City and it was just full of vinyl.

And I thought, you know what?

This looks like fun.

I want to get one of these every week.

I'm in New York.

So I have been doing so.

And it's been great.

Genuinely, it's been wonderful for me.

And I want to kind of walk you through why and how vinyl works, because surprisingly enough, there's not been a ton about it.

There's been a lot of audio pervert stuff, and there's been people saying, Oh, vinyl's having a resurgent.

Fuck all that.

I just want to talk about listening to it.

So, if you don't know how it works, it is delightfully analog.

And I did not know how it worked before, so I had to look it up.

So, a record player is made up of a few pieces.

The platter, where you put the record, the belt that spins the platter, the spindle, which is the thing that you put the record on, like the hole in the record goes on that.

The motor, which turns the platter to spin said record, and the tone arm, which holds the needle or the stylus, which sticks onto the record and goes along the grooves of the record, sends the signals to the cartridge, which is the little box on the top of the stylus that takes the vibrations and turns them into electrical

signals that play music.

Signacles.

We're not editing it.

I'm just going to let that one fly.

Now, if I missed the piece there, do not bother correcting me.

I'm not going to edit it, not going to fix it.

But in simpler terms, it's quite literally record player go burr.

now i basically only spend my money on diet coke and going to baseball so i allowed myself a little bit of an extravagance i got myself the orbit basic turntable from u-turn audio which is the wirecutter's budget pick along with their ethos speakers which sent me back about a grand you can go cheaper on record players than speakers but i think it this is absolutely a place where you get what you pay for based on a little googling it seems getting a cheaper record player can literally destroy the records because if the needle and the cartridge aren't good it scrapes them.

I didn't really understand why, but it sufficiently scared me.

I'd also already bought the other things, so it didn't really scare me that much.

I should note that I've got the Orbic Basic because it has a preamp built into it, meaning that you can just plug it directly into some speakers rather than having to get a separate amplifier.

If you're not super technical, just know that this means I plug a red and yellow cables, red and white maybe, into a speaker rather than a giant box that has a bunch of other stuff.

I also got something called a Q lever, which is a little arm that delicately raises or lowers the arm and the stylus onto the record.

You need one of these, you must have one.

My ape-like hands would probably just shove the needle repeatedly into the into the record, destroying a beautiful relic of the 60s.

Anyway, all this took about 10 minutes to set up and it was mostly because I was learning how record players work as I went and also I was on two hours of sleep.

I'm 39 years old.

I shouldn't be taking a red eye.

You have to loop the belt around the platter which is the round bit and then click some stuff into place then connect the speakers with the cables that come with it and there you go you just kind of start playing records.

Now as far as actually getting records i'm a nasty freak so i decided to go to a website called discogs.com which is both a great place to organize what records you have and buy the ones you don't i decided to get a selection of classics from the 60s and 70s originals joe coccus with a help little help from my friends charles mangus's black saint and the sinner lady lee morgan's cornbread van morrison's moondance in part because i wanted to hear them as they were played on release and in part because these are all records that came out when my mum was in her 20s which is when i moved to new york so i was kind of like ah fuck it play records like my mum I also got a few newer records and remasters of things like Queens of the Stone Age's songs for the deaf and working with the Miles Davis quartet as well as this insanely high-end limited edition pressing of Miles Davis's kind of blue because I was curious and I had some Amazon credit now the reason I got such a selection was I was curious whether things sounded different based on how old they were and whether the whole vinyl sounds better thing was a myth and the answer is yes they do sound different and no it's not really a myth at all.

The originals from Mingus, Morgan, and Morrison all sound different, old, but not in a way that's crackly or bad.

The percussion feels a bit more present, and the bass tones are a bit more forceful.

It feels,

I don't even know how to say it because I'm not a music journalist, but it feels rounder.

It feels more alive.

And I realize this might be psychosomatic, a thing I'll say later.

But...

And I'm going to be honest, like, Cocker's help with help from my friends.

I've listened to this album a great deal digitally.

It's down pitch and it has a softer feel to it, and it just sounds different in a nice way.

Describing sound with words is difficult, which is why I'm not a music journalist, but the way these record plays was and is incredibly special.

And what was heartening was even the cheaper, by which I mean 30 buck, records I got like Herbie Hancock's Imperian Isle or Art Black E's Caravan.

They still played marvelously.

And I must say, Caravan is a fucking incredible record.

Just the drums at the beginning is insane.

I stood up and I did the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing thing at my record player.

And all of this is possible because we kind of live in the golden age of vinyl.

We've got these dedicated audio engineers who dig out master tapes and perfectly press them onto these gorgeous records, and they sound amazing.

And my favorite example of that is this UHQR pressing of Miles Davis's kind of blue I mentioned earlier.

And it came from this company called Analog Sounds, and it just sounds insane.

Like the instruments are in the room and Miles Davis is watching me write a post saying, what if Anthony Bourdain saw JoJo's Bizarre Adventure?

I don't think Miles Davis would love that.

I think Charles Mingus might have liked JoJo, but I don't think Miles Davis would have.

This is based on my very thin knowledge of jazz history.

Email me if you have any thoughts about this, what famous musicians would or would not like JoJo.

But nevertheless, the UHQR stuff is insane.

I'm going to put a link to them in the notes.

There's a story from the Times, I believe, about them.

It's just.

There are people dedicated to vinyl right now, more dedicated than any tech CEO, and they love it, and perhaps it will destroy them like a cursed amulet, but they have found this incredible way of

recreating music, I guess, if you could even call it that.

And it sounds just bonkers.

I've already ordered a few others because I really wanted to hear Steely Dan's dirty work on an extremely expensive vinyl.

And I'm not even being sarcastic.

That song is a complete banger.

And if you disagree with me, you're simply wrong.

I love listening to vinyl.

It's changed how I listen to music for the better.

The convenience of digital audio means that I have this kind of bad habit.

I imagine some of you do as well.

I skip around, I repeat songs, I find myself stuck in these musical ruts where I'm just listening to one or two songs again and again and again because of my emotion or state, or because I want to feel a certain way, or because I want to sustain a mood or banish a mood.

And while that can be useful, kind of takes the fun out of music at times.

Vinyl obviously naturally forces you to sit with at least one side of it.

And I found myself keeping going regardless.

Like I'll flip it over.

Now, Redditors and engineers will argue that vinyl does not sound better, but I and Moron fully disagree.

I've listened to LP's I'll Sleep One You're Dead maybe a hundred times in MP3.

That song, that album even, got me through college.

Without it, I would have probably got on the train out of Aberystwyth and simply never returned.

Wouldn't have gone back to London either.

But that album helped me.

And I will tell you, the vinyl-based version is different.

The synths are more insistent.

It feels dystopian and brutal.

It's overwhelmingly dire.

And it's because vinyl sounds warmer and more present.

And I don't know if this is all in my head.

I really do not.

But I am someone that is naturally a bit cynical, and I'm just having more fun listening to music than I ever have in my life.

Instead of those loops, instead of finding myself kind of just using music as a tool, as just a thing that exists in my life, it's become this deliberate, not not even mood setter, because sometimes, you know, you might feel like an album, you don't feel like a song.

And you'll find yourself really enjoying something you didn't really think of.

Marjorie, off of With a Little Help from My Friends, for example, a song that I, on my MP3s, would skip every time, has this warm Hammond organ shit to it.

This just sounds marvelous.

And you can also talk about music in this incredibly insufferable way like I am right now, but I don't know, insufferable or not, I'm having the time of my fucking life with this.

And I really recommend you do too.

The ritual of putting on a record feels good, the sound's amazing, and we're in this digital age defined by convenience over joy, and it's a deliberacy and a way of focusing more.

Even if it's on in the background, it feels more significant.

I don't know.

I'm talking in the wanky way that I'd usually make fun of AI people for.

But this is music.

You can be emotional.

You can be

esoteric with the things you love you're not hurting anyone telling people that vinyl is superior or makes you feel better because it is a very personal experience and you can quite literally travel back in time you can pick up things from the 60s or the 70s and hear it as they were then and yeah there are some crappy vinyl pressings i'm hearing the no doubts tragic kingdom just doesn't have a good vinyl release which sucks because that's one of my favorite albums but it's helping me return to albums i love and listen to them deliberately and with just a whole new different sound stage, I guess you'd call it.

I don't know.

Whether or not this is exact or not, whether it's anything more than just the ritual and the environment that's making me feel this way, I feel fucking good doing it.

And

I just cannot recommend it enough.

Give it a go if you've been considering it.

I found peace and happiness in LPs, and I think you will too.

Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.

There was the six-foot cartoon otter who came out from behind a curtain.

It actually really matters that driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

Should I be telling this thing all about my loved life?

I think we will see a Twitch stream or president maybe within within our lifetimes.

You can find Close All tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.

I couldn't even believe it was real.

Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Kennedy was killed.

Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Drew Pinski, Corey Feldman, and more.

Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Oral health goes beyond just aesthetics.

It's deeply connected to your general health and well-being.

That's why preventing oral health problems before they start is so important.

When you use the Colgate Total Active Prevention System, you're not just helping to prevent oral health problems like cavities and gingivitis.

You're laying the groundwork for overall wellness.

Colgate Total's three product routine includes a reformulated toothpaste, an innovative toothbrush, and a refreshing antibacterial mouthwash that all support a healthy mouth.

In fact, the three products were designed to work together to be 15 times more effective at reducing bacteria buildup in six weeks, starting from week one, compared to a non-antibacterial fluoride toothpaste and flat-trim toothbrush.

Take control of your oral health and get the Colgate Total active prevention system today so you can be dentist ready.

Visit shop.colgate.com/slash total.

This is an iHeart podcast.