For some Alabama music lovers, vinyl still rules
This bunch of vinyl LPs could contain a new pressing from a cutting-edge artist, a near-forgotten memory from your youth or an original Velvet Underground LP with an intact banana sticker. You never know until you thumb through. (Getty Images)
For music fans, every new change in technology seems to push the days of LPs and CDs further back into that corner of the past where rotary phones keep company with manual typewriters.
Even digital downloads, which not so long ago revolutionized the music business, are having a hard time keeping up. Forbes magazine reports that on-demand audio streaming zoomed past digital for the top share of music sales in 2016.
So why was the Bessemer Civic Center full of people this past weekend, crowded into cramped aisles and snapping up vinyl albums and the smaller “singles” known as 45s as if it were still the heyday of the Beatles, Doors and Cream?
The Alabama Record Collectors Association CD & Record Show, now in its 36th year, is evidence that, for some people at least, vinyl still rules.
“Deep down inside, I think people would still like to own something physical, compared to streaming music,” said record dealer David Norwood, who traveled from Moulton to run a booth for the show. “Something they can hold in their hands.”
There’s passion in the grooves for Alabama Record Collectors from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Norwood has nothing against modern technology, and acknowledged that streaming is a great way to enjoy music. But he described himself as a “vinyl junkie” and joked that being around fellow enthusiasts at the show made him feel “a little more normal.”
He and the customers at the show, mostly boomers but with a few millennials sprinkled in, are not alone. The Forbes article noted that vinyl LPs account for a relatively small but surprisingly growing portion of music sales, increasing in 2016 for the 11th year in a row. CD sales, however, were down sharply, by 16.3 percent, last year.
Fred Dahlke of Birmingham, the founder of the association that presented the show, said he’s seen a resurgence of interest as more people discover that vinyl records, as he puts it, just sound better.
“A better sound … more warmth,” he said. “I’ve always thought that, myself.”
Dahlke, a former professional musician and retired college professor, started the association in 1980 simply to bring together people who, like himself, enjoy music and collecting records.
“It was a dream of mine,” he said. “It’s grown exponentially. It’s been wonderful because you’ve got a big, versatile group of people that collects all kinds of music and genres.”
For more information on the association, visit alabamarecordcollectors.org.
