‘Bred Crumbs

Remember back after Seinfeld ended, how Jerry Seinfeld kind of retired, and was never on TV?

I miss those days. (Meaning, I’m about two Bee Movie promos away from having a brick-sized hole in my TV screen.)

You know what else seemed to have wisely retired after a long tenure of worthy entertainment service, but is now threatening to ruin everything by coming back? Vinyl. At least, if a commentary on Wired is to be believed.

Seems the indie hipster crowd is embracing the "warmer, richer sound" myth and wants vinyl, not CDs, as the preferred hard-copy backup format for their fave MP3s. The Wired commentary suggests that this development will finally kill the CD, which, you’ll recall, killed vinyl. (Murder is an ugly, and confusing, business.)

The article says vinyl might now actually sound better than CD, but only because everyone’s favorite screw-you industry, the music biz, is skimping on the quality of CDs by crushing the compression. The article doesn’t point out that to keep a vinyl record sounding excellent, you have to obsess about its cleanliness to a degree that requires hermetically sealing your home and cleaning the discs with nanoscopic brushes while observing them carefully with CSI microscopes under every possible light angle. Otherwise, hello snaps and crackles. There are old songs in my digital collection of tunes in which I still expect to hear little vinyl pops at very specific points, because that’s how I heard them on record for years. (On other old tracks, I expect the song to fade out in the middle for a loud KA-CHUNK sound, but that’s a whole different problem.)

The kids are also grooving (ha!) on the big album art, which we all missed when it went away. But we got over it. And we are better for it. CDs were a huge step forward, a step that shouldn’t be taken back.

The primary advantage of the CD is its relative smallness. Normally, the trend of things getting smaller isn’t welcome in these parts, because it leads to an increase in unwanted events such as forgetting one’s phone is in one’s pants then putting one’s pants in one’s washer and dryer, leaving one’s phone expensively unusable. But this is an exception, because you know what I really don’t have room for? The vast cubic yards of space it takes to store a record collection. And four square feet of empty surface to house the laughably antique device it takes to play the records.

I mean, seriously, if we’re looking to bring back the fin-tailed roadster of music media, why don’t we just go all the way and revive Edison cylinders? Their sound is richer, warmer, and infused with almond overtones and a smoky apple finish. Perfect with chicken or pasta.