𝐃 𝐗 𝐌 𝐈 𝐍 𝐈 𝐐

The movie Almost Famous made Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Lester Bangs feel cuddly, like an old sweater pulled over the sharp bones of reality. That’s the Cameron Crowe effect. Even the most intolerable characters come lacquered in nostalgia, softened by the ebb and flow of a story so neatly woven it’s hard to tell where the artificiality begins. When I was fourteen, I bought a collection of Bangs’ work—Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste—and studied the guy like he had the answers. Two years later, I was buried under Gustav Flaubert, taking an arts baccalaureate in literature, convinced I could smug my way into writing academic papers. I was wrong.

What I wanted—what I really wanted—was a record player. A working one. Not a flimsy Crosley from Urban Outfitters but something real, something heavy, a machine built to last. I wanted to listen to albums the way people used to, to experience the ritual of it: the lift, the drop, the slight crackle of dust on vinyl. I wanted to be Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lester Bangs, plucking records from an overstuffed shelf, letting the needle hit the groove, letting the music play like it mattered.

In the early 2020s, I got my wish. An Audio-Technica turntable. It came into my possession after I inherited a box of progressive and classic rock albums from Bill, a man we met at an estate sale. Bill wasn’t the kind of guy who clung to his youth. He had moved on. Loved music but loved his business more. He wasn’t sentimental. But I was. That’s how I started listening to records again. And CDs.

Every time I set up my player, I feel exactly how I’m supposed to feel. Like I’m back in college, like I’m paying attention, like I’m listening—really listening—to the lyrics, to the sequencing, to the intention behind one track leading into another. Nothing beats intention. Nothing beats storytelling. Streaming services don’t give me that. My Spotify and Pandora accounts are paid for, but they make music feel cheap. I can skip whenever I want. I can go back whenever I need to. But the ease of it, the usability, means I don’t own the albums—I’m renting them. And that’s the real tragedy.

Most music today feels like content. That’s the word people use now. Content. It’s hard to sit down and listen to anything because nothing asks to be listened to. I started listening to records and CDs as an exercise in concentration. To fight the urge to fidget, to stop myself from skipping tracks, to sit still and let something unfold without my interference. My turntable doesn’t care about my attention span. It plays the record in full. My only job is to listen.

I’m not going to buy an iPod and mod it. That’s ridiculous. But I will keep buying records. I’ll keep forcing my husband to buy me concert tickets. I’ll keep trying to experience music the way it’s meant to be experienced—without an algorithm, without a shuffle button, without the option to fast-forward through the good parts.