Welcome - Introduce Yourself Here

Greetings!
Just wanted to say thanks for getting these forums back up and running. I don't post a lot, but mostly lurk semi-professionally on many of the audio forums. I work at a chemical refinery and when things get slow, I always try to find some time to catch up on what's happening in the audio-nerd world, (my wife's label).
Forums are by far my favorite hang out, so I was pretty bummed when the Vinyl Me Please symposium folded, having just discovered it barely a month ago. So, thank you again to those that started and funded Needles & Grooves, not to mention, all the folks that returned. You have my sincere appreciation!
 
Big ups to all the folks who very quickly got this site up and running. I’m amazed at the speed it happened and the quality of the site. Well done. I contributed before the GoFundMe closed, but wouldn’t mind regularly contributing some money on an annual/monthly basis to not just keep the site from being a money-loser, but to also give some sort of stipend to the folks running and managing things. I’m sure people are just being generous with their time, but enough dough to fund a record or two or three per month for all involved seems like the right thing to do.

I’m half-century old and live in Portland, OR with my better half of 13+ years, 3 dogs (2 boxers and a rescue terrier/mutt) and two cats. No kids of my own, but the three (essentially) step-daughters are moved out and either graduated from college or about to be. For work, I have a blue-collar/union job for the bennies and retirement savings, and still do some white-collar tech stuff for some work-from-home dough.

I was born in the Bronx, lived there until I was 10, then Long Island until I was 18, then off to college and beyond which saw me live in Buffalo for a long time, a spell in Rhode Island, some time in Denver, and now in Oregon. I always had records until I dumped them when I moved outta Buffalo in the late 90s and didn’t want to haul them around the country, but kept the CDs. I was CD-only for a long while but had them all stolen in the early 2000s when my apartment was robbed in Denver while I was at work. That was a tough loss because I had soooooo many CDs from smaller bands from Western New York and Southern Ontario that were tough or impossible to replace. Took a strong turn back to vinyl in 2014 and was a VMP annual subscriber from December 2014 for three straight years. Never swapped, always wanted to try something new even if I didn’t think I’d like it before hearing it.

IMO it’s normal to fall out of the vinyl subscription mode over time as you cultivate sources of information that allow you to better curate for yourself. I sign up for emails from labels, follow bands and people on Bandcamp, watch YouTube, follow Instagram, read vinyl/music articles daly, and keep an eye on forums. All besides people I know IRL and talk to in record stores. You can curate for yourself. As prices for vinyl rise and rise, unless you have a ton of disposable income, it’s tougher and tougher to hand your money to a source and allow them to blindly curate for you.

My preference is for physical media over streaming. I prefer vinyl, then CD, then cassette. I probably have between 800-900 vinyls, around half as many CDs, and a few dozen cassettes. I buy cassettes if that’s the only choice for physical media. For vinyl I rarely buy reissues (Discogs has me with under 7% with the reissue tag); if I can’t get an OG copy of a record I want, I buy the CD version.

For newer releases, I tend to go with the CD version unless I’m confident it’ll be pressed well. For example, Amyl and the Sniffers just released their first LP, and I would have bought the vinyl version but the US release is via ATO Records, who press at GZ, and I’ve had poor ATO pressings in the recent past (recent Claypool Lennon Delirium being the latest example), so I just buy on CD when I want an ATO release. Again, I prefer vinyl, but I’m careful not to fetishize it.

Musical preferences are punk, rock, noise, followed by old-school hip hop, old-school country and soul, then I dabble in the rest. Recently bought my first classical record (Beth Gibbons contributed vocals in Polish!) and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Pretty open-minded musically, and the same goes politically (I’m an unaffiliated voter).

Glad to be here - lots of good souls here.
 
Last edited:
I stumbled upon this site a few days ago while searching for new vinyl, and wanted to say hello to the group. I make my living as a cellist in a professional orchestra, and also teach at the undergrad level. Admittedly, I’ve never been one to post very often on message boards or social media. However, this struck me as an open and welcoming community so I joined. Thank you to the folks who did the work to get all of this up and running. Hope everyone is doing well.
 
macondo said:
I stumbled upon this site a few days ago while searching for new vinyl, and wanted to say hello to the group. I make my living as a cellist in a professional orchestra, and also teach at the undergrad level. Admittedly, I’ve never been one to post very often on message boards or social media. However, this struck me as an open and welcoming community so I joined. Thank you to the folks who did the work to get all of this up and running. Hope everyone is doing well.
Click to expand...

welcome it is good to see new faces that didn't come from the old place
 
macondo said:
I stumbled upon this site a few days ago while searching for new vinyl, and wanted to say hello to the group. I make my living as a cellist in a professional orchestra, and also teach at the undergrad level. Admittedly, I’ve never been one to post very often on message boards or social media. However, this struck me as an open and welcoming community so I joined. Thank you to the folks who did the work to get all of this up and running. Hope everyone is doing well.
Click to expand...

That's amazing! Great to have you :)
 
macondo said:
I stumbled upon this site a few days ago while searching for new vinyl, and wanted to say hello to the group. I make my living as a cellist in a professional orchestra, and also teach at the undergrad level. Admittedly, I’ve never been one to post very often on message boards or social media. However, this struck me as an open and welcoming community so I joined. Thank you to the folks who did the work to get all of this up and running. Hope everyone is doing well.
Click to expand...

It will be cool to have more musicians around. Funnily we don’t get musicians perspectives on music that often.
 
Hey everyone! I joined the-club-that-should-not-be-named in August last year, posted a few times on the original forum, and moved here one last month, so I though it was finally time for an intro!

I'm French, been living in Ireland for about 10 years, and Dublin for 5. I've been buying records from the mid/end-90's when it was cheaper than CDs (and most of the things I listened to where vinyl only releases), and started "collecting" and expanding my musical tastes a few years ago (I wouldn't have bet a euro on myself buying jazz records when I was collecting oi and streetpunk 7" a a teenager).

Really enjoying the community here so far!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top