confession friday: vinyl

As an iTunes addict sans iPod, this is going to sound unusual. I miss record stores. Remember the last time you were in a record store? And I'm talking about records. Vinyl. Large round black disks inscribed with music. I can still recall the scent of them. The feel of holding them up with my index finger and spinning them around. The last time I was in a record store: high school. I was a borderline punk/hippy dippy/indy/dork. (I know this is a surprise to most of you < /snark >) There is/was a record store on 22nd (Cameron, my memory fades, so correct me if I'm wrong) that the misfits flocked to like Mecca. Social misfits dressed in black, drowning in the misery of adolescence, wandered the aisles, fingering our way through Morrissey, the Cure or otherwise socially absurd musicians. I'm old enough to remember vinyl's allure, but young enough to be entranced by the convenience of downloadable music. Now when I think about that one song, what was it, oh, yes, Papa Was A Rolling Stone, one click gets me a .99 cent download. Or when I look for the latest album from Jason Mraz, M-R-A-Z himself, again I search in iTunes. I own about 20 albums, which is what I still call the "music collections" released today. Some of them are records I imported from my time abroad in Paris or Scotland. Others are downright forgettable. But they all share the same sensory connection to music. A connection lost on a generation of MP3-playing social misfits, dressed in black, still drowning in the misery of adolescence.

The irony? I don't even own a turntable.