Lately, I’m interested in getting the best sound possible out of my stereo system. So I’m investigating and checking out some reviews online from experts in the subject. One of the options of the format of listening music is Vinyl. Once you have tested different formats (cassette, CD, MP3, etc) and you’ve picked your favorite one you go for the amplifier and speakers that suit you best. For me, and for now, I prefer Vinyl for many reasons. If you wanna check out why I choose this format click here.
In the middle of investigating opinions and criticism of Vinyl, I came out with a documentary made from Alan Zweig named… Vinyl (as simple as that). I had no idea of who was this guy nor what was his background in music. I just saw that his documentary was highly rated on IMDb (7.2). So I decided to watch it without reading the abstract. And if you guys know me a little bit, you know I prefer surprises 🙂
Alan starts the film by making a small interview to himself through a mirror. He talks about his love towards music, and especially, analog music. He doesn’t seem to be sure about his feeling for this art. It seems that he has a love/hate/frustrating relationship with it. The beginning, as you might suppose, got me a bit confused.
Then he presents a different number of interviews made to vinyl collectors. Zweig questioned things like why they do it, how many records they possess and since when they begging to collect them. All things came back to normal until one collector says: “Are we talking about music?” Alan says “No”, the collector then states “And then, Why I am here? Why you are questioning me some things if I do this for music?”.
Alan makes a second part of the mirrored interview and he talks about his personal life. How he spends time buying and collecting records without really knowing why he was doing it. The film gets interesting at this point. More personal questions were made to the collectors and they seemed to get very uncomfortable, and in some cases (and in my opinion of course), they lie in front of the camera to feel good about themselves.
I don’t want to tell you more about this documentary because I don’t like to be a spoiler. You can check it out for free on youtube if you like. I really suggest you do it. It is 2 hours that will get your head spinning about the subject for days.
One last thing I would like to add. I think that if you have a music collection, is better to have few albums that you like and that you actually listen to. It is better to have 80 albums that you love and enjoy listening that 80.000 that you hang on your wall just to feel more important than other collectors. Don’t be an obsessive person. Remember, every single thing executed excessively is bad. If you have a record, play it, feel it and love it. This is what the music is all about really. Don’t you think?
If you like, you can see the documentary here