Final Thoughts on "Soul Jazz to Post-Bop to New Thing to Electrically Eclectic"

Yesterday marked the end of the mix-and-notes for The Never-Ending J-Card—22 track descriptions shared over the course of four weeks, taking the listener from the early ‘60s soul jazz of Grant Green and Hank Mobley to the early ‘70s sonic freak-outs of Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis.
 
If you’re reading this now, and you’ve enjoyed any of the posts: Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to hear the entire playlist in order, as intended—instead of clicking on a bunch of individual YouTube videos—you can find it on Spotify here.
 
I want to emphasize, though, that my introduction to all of these tracks came via physical albums, purchased either on vintage vinyl or used CDs—or, often, both, since the two listening experiences are different, at least to me.
 
Although I’d heard or read about most of these titles in advance of buying them, I didn’t necessarily know what I was getting into until I brought each one home, plopped it into the tray or onto the turntable, and did some dedicated listening.
 
With the advent of streaming services and smart speakers, and the decline of physical media generally, I’ve watched friends and acquaintances dispatch their album collections, dump their stereos at local thrift stores, and happily do all of their future music listening on their iPhones, paying monthly fees for temporary access to data-compressed versions of the music they once loved.
 
I understand the stress that clutter and piles of physical stuff can bring to people’s lives. I also acknowledge that finding the dedicated space and free time for a proper listening room—and the resources to buy and maintain decent stereo equipment—implies a certain amount of privilege.
 
That said: There is no experience quite like physically acquiring music, and hearing it in full digital or analog resolution on a properly set-up two-channel stereo while reading the original printed liner notes.
 
Further, the barriers to the ownership of both music and high-quality stereo gear are, at this point, ridiculously low. Nowadays, with a little persistence, anyone can find entry-level-to-good-quality audiophile gear on Craigslist and build an impressive-sounding two-channel stereo system for under $300.
 
Or for free, even: At this point, I have scooped up piles of gear—including, among other things, a 350-watt Klipsch subwoofer, a pair of German-made Canton home theater speakers, and a perfectly serviceable Technics direct-drive turntable—mostly via Freecycle or Craigslist’s “free” section.
 
I have two 2.1 channel stereos in my house, and a 5.1 channel home theater. The components I’ve actually paid money for in those systems have ranged in price from $15–$75.

If you’re patient, and check the new listings once a day, I promise you can find these deals, too.
 
While the resurgence of interest in vinyl means that new 180-gram reissues will run you in the neighborhood of $18–$28 per record, used records are often available in stores priced between $6–$16.
 
Many back catalog CDs are available new for under $12; used CDs will typically run from $3–$8 a pop, depending on where you’re shopping and how common the title is. (Out-of-print or rare music will cost more.)
 
But here again, people are offloading physical music every day, and with a little patience—and a little luck—you will find boxes of unloved music out there for very little money, or even for free.
 
Sometimes I get asked: Is it worth preserving all this stuff? Will it actually last? Or does it all end up unplayable and in the dumpster anyway?
 
When I was young, my dad tip-toed around his vinyl collection; he’d play each record he purchased exactly once, make a copy on cassette, then play the tape from that point on, only removing the record from the sleeve on very special occasions.
 
The prevailing wisdom at the time was that playing a record damaged it, and that each spin inevitably degraded the sound.
 
Similarly, with the advent of mp3s and streaming, writers rushed to caution about the fragile, fugitive nature of CDs—and offer alarming descriptions of bronzing, CD rot, and other unexpected maladies that supposedly make the format unreliable.
 
The truth is that all objects are always degrading to some extent or another—but that most physical media, if stored in a temperature-stable environment, and not abused or dirtied too much, will probably outlast your ability to enjoy it.
 
People have largely gotten over the notion that each play of a vinyl record destroys it. If you store your records upright, keep them clean—I use a spin cleaner to very occasionally wash records, and a brush to remove stray dust before playing—and properly set up your turntable, you should be good to go.
 
In my library, I have a few dozen CDs manufactured around 1985; all still play perfectly and have no issues that I can see or hear.
 
Any compromised CDs I have owned (and since replaced) were damaged thanks to my own carelessness. I once was a crazy oil painter, and in my desperate grad school days I handled lead-based white paint, turpentine, and some of my favorite CDs bare-handed and simultaneously, thanks. Pro tip: Don't get solvents and varnishes on your music.

I have also loaned CDs to friends who I have to assume enjoyed using them as beer coasters.
 
Just remember: Everyone worries about scratching the playing side, but the label side actually contains the data. Handled only by the edges, and always returned to their cases, your CDs should bear up just fine for many decades.
 
What about the technology? Will you still be able to play this stuff in the future?
 
Turntables are simple mechanical devices, and pretty reliable. You can pick a forty-year-old old one up at a yard sale for $25, clean and oil it, slap on a new cartridge, and aside from some simple routine maintenance and adjustments that you can definitely find someone explaining on YouTube and perform yourself, you will likely be set for continuous listening enjoyment for years to come.
 
I purchased a Sony single-disc CD player in 1993; I have used it for at least an hour every day since then, and have never had it serviced. It still works to this day. I recently purchased a brand new Yamaha CD player for my basement music studio; given my previous experiences with the technology, I assume it will continue working until I’m dead.

If you find speakers from the 1980s or '70s, you may see that the foam gaskets around the woofers have started to fall apart; the sound may also start to get muddy as the capacitors dry out. Kits are available online to glue in new foam surrounds—it's potentially messy work, but takes no special skill. If you have a soldering iron, or a friend who does, re-capping a speaker is not too scary, either...or just avoid buying speakers that are almost as old or older than you.
 
Why bother with all of this? I’m no high-end gear hound, nor am I an engineer, but to the extent that I understand it: Recording engineers have historically worked to create either faithful reproductions or convincing simulations of the experience of being in a particular room, with specific acoustic properties, and hearing a group of musicians arrayed in space and responding to each other.
 
Even if instruments are now sonically isolated in “dead” rooms, or overdubbed, or processed using various effects—even if some of the instruments are electronic, or sampled, or not instruments at all—the engineer’s goal is still to create a unified listening experience, and create a certain type of coherent soundstage.
 
Every step down in audio quality—from stereo separation to mono; from large speakers to small; from high resolution and dynamic range to compressed and limited sound—removes the listener further and further from fully hearing what was played, and, by extension, what ideas the musicians were trying to communicate.
 
If I rip an ostensibly full-res WAV from a song on one of my CDs, the resulting file will likely take up 27–30 megabytes of space on my computer’s hard drive.
 
The same song converted into a decent mp3 file format will occupy a mere 5–9 megabytes.
 
Question: Where did those lost 20+ megs of data go?
 
Answer: Not into my ears.
 
Anyway, if you love music, I encourage you to own it, and take care of it, instead of leasing it…and to play it on a proper stereo, instead of banishing it to some small speaker in the corner of the room. Don’t short-change your ears—or your brain.