An Experience All of Its Own

There seems to be many universal excuses people use: “my dog ate it”, “I just lost track of time”, and so on. But one probably seems like the the real go-to for when people can't get rid of something, “Oh, it has sentimental value, I can't get rid of that.”

Sentimental value. It's something people can not understand for others, but justify for themselves. Your collection of Hot Wheels has sentimental value to you, but you can't see why your wife needs to keep all those magazines. Issues like that often arise when sentimental value is involved. However, one place where sentimental value is almost always involved is music.

I would be willing to put money on the fact that around 75% of people still have some records (vinyl LP's) from when they were young. Now, they may not ever listen to them, nor even have the means to listen to them, but they still have them. The real question is why.

The easy answer is sentimental value. Which is mostly true for most people. They have good memories of their childhood, probably hanging out in the basement listening to the newest Beatles or Led Zeppelin album with their friends. And that's all great, and for those reasons, vinyls should be kept.

This year for Christmas, my mom got a converter, which is a turn table that plugs in to the computer and records the album so you can have it digitally. This is a great machine. I've already converted two Beatles albums, a huge Christmas set of four records, and two other miscellaneous albums. But still, this has taught me to love the culture of my parent's era, and it brought me to see the sentimental value in the albums.

So now I jump to my generation. The generation of kids who have virtually unlimited access to music, most of it free. If you look on a kid's iPod today, and ask them how much of their music they either paid for, bought/received the album, or even got the album/mix cd burned, they would say not very much. HP says “The computer is personal again.” Well the way I see it, music is becoming less personal.

It's because of technologies these days. When kids think of music, they don't think of records, or 8-tracks, or cassette tapes like their parents did, instead they think of the little icon in a giant list int their My Music folder. Most of their albums are mislabeled, so iTunes can't find the album art, and so they don't get to experience the full act of listening to music.

About a year ago I was at a wrestling tournament in downtown Sacramento, CA. I was just roaming around, and I saw this music store,The Beat (1700 J street). I figured I had never really been in a record store, so why not. I wanted a new cd, but I just didn't know who to get. I had forty minutes to browse, and I used up most of it. Just going through the cd racks, seeing all the album art that artists have on their cd's truly opened my eyes to how much people are loosing nowadays. They even had a row of vinyls there as well, although I didn't go through it because I knew our record player was in the garage somewhere and I couldn't listen to it. So I decided on a Pearl Jam cd, and left.

That experience was one of the most memorable in my life. Just going through the racks, seeing all the music that is out there in its physical form, was truly fun. I felt like what my parents must have felt like, going through the albums of their time. That gave music sentimental value to me. So I hope my parent's don't get rid of their records, cause I want them. They have sentimental value to me as well. As for cds, most of them do. There are a few that I didn't enjoy as much as I thought I would, but for others, like the anticipation of waiting for Stadium Arcadium to come out by the Red Hot Chili Peppers I will always hold. For many people these days, music is simply something you listen to. But for those who truly love music, music is an experience all of its own.