Member-only story
Love Of The Vinyl Record
— And CDs and Cassettes!
There must be a small demographic of people who remember a time when you could buy CDs, vinyls, and cassettes by the same artist in the same store.
I’m one.
Where I grew up there was a shop called Mike’s Records. It wasn’t a collector's emporium or specialist dealer. It was just your local record store where you went to buy music.
The same as you went to the green grocer to buy an apple. Or the garage to buy a car. You went to Mike’s to buy music.
The town wasn’t big, but there were enough bored kids and discontented adults to make it a lucrative business. There was no one else in the town, and if you didn’t want to get the train to the city, you bought your hits from Mike’s.
And in the mid 80s, you still had all three choices. The dependable cassette, the trusty vinyl, or the new and cool CD.
This was Mike’s heyday. CDs were expensive, but people bought them. Sometimes even a cassette as well if they were flushed, so they could listen to the same album in their car.
I always went for cassettes, so I could listen to them on my Walkman.
My parents didn’t like loud music. Well, actually, they didn’t like music at all. This was despite buying me a record player…
