Vinyl Collections of the Un-Aged

Owning a turntable is a music snob right of passage. It signifies to your friends "I am so damn serious about music that I bother to flip over a record every 20 minutes." As an added bonus, real (i.e. old) adults find you adorable for having one and buy/give you records to fuel their own nostalgia. These are good things.

Once the turntable has been purchased, a problem soon arises. Well, if you are a poor a problem arises.

As soon as you hit the record store, you are drawn to the $2 bin like a moth to a very cheap flame. Rifling through the less expensive offerings, one thing becomes abundantly clear: as my mother would say, "there are reasons." Don't get me wrong, I love Tom Jones as much as the next 23 year old (Read: to a limited degree, mostly only when in Vegas) but 15 copies of his greatest hits? MMmm nothanks. Wait.....Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun?!?!!?" I love that one! Get the Knack for a dollar?! Def!

And so it begins. Your vinyl collection fills with 80's hits and jazz compilations with liner notes in Italian. While they amuse your friends, the magic of owning a turntable is somewhat diminished by playing the same songs heard at a frat party on it (to be fair, The Knack album is quite good).

As it happens, music I like is also music that other music snobs like. Other music snobs who also own turntables. The field of competition, while narrow, is fierce. I slowly, painfully, came to the conclusion that no matter how many hours are spent searching through bins, I am not going to find a Gang of Four album for $3. Until I have a savings account, Benny Goodman and I are just going to have to learn to love each other.

UPDATE: I retract this entire post. Yesterday, I found Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club for $3. I have literally never been happier.