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TO HAVE AND TO HOLD: TOUCH AND THE VINYL RESURGENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2018

Adam Harper
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Abstract

This article reviews a recent wave of literature on the resurgence of vinyl records, examining what it has claimed about vinyl's capacity for tangibility and the contrast to digital media, associated with intangibility. These claims are explained with reference to other literatures on touch, and it is suggested that vinyl's haptics mediates and embodies the emotionally rewarding production of a sense of self. The apparent contrast of vinyl aesthetics with classical music aesthetics is also discussed, and the presence of contemporary classical music within the vinyl resurgence is considered.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 73 , Issue 287 , January 2019 , pp. 52 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 Reynolds, Simon, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past (New York: Faber & Faber, 2011)Google Scholar; Bartmanski, Dominik, and Woodward, Ian, Vinyl: The Analogue Record in the Digital Age (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)Google Scholar; Sax, David, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter (New York: PublicAffairs, 2016)Google Scholar; Winters, Paul E., Vinyl Records and Analog Culture in the Digital Age: Pressing Matters (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2016)Google Scholar; Bickerdike, Jennifer Otter, Why Vinyl Matters: A Manifesto from Musicians and Fans (Woodbridge: ACC Editions, 2017)Google Scholar; Corbett, John, Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krukowski, Damon, The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (London: MIT Press, 2017)Google Scholar.

2 Winters, Vinyl Records and Analog Culture, p. 46.

3 Sax, The Revenge of Analog, p. ix

4 Sax, The Revenge of Analog, p. x

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10 Corbett, Vinyl Freak, p. 11.

11 Bartmanski and Woodward, Vinyl, p. 30.

12 Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 11. Corbett makes a very similar case, adding that, ‘my proclivity has always been toward material culture’: Corbett, Vinyl Freak, p. 7.

13 Bartmanski and Woodward, Vinyl, p. 166.

14 Krukowski, The New Analog, p. 89

15 Henry Rollins, in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 37.

16 Karen Emanuel, in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 167.

17 Stephen Godfroy, in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 206. Godfroy's answers read as if they were written rather than spoken, and carefully and make the case for vinyl as a contrast to the lacks and excesses of digital-age stimulation.

18 Clint Boon, in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 92.

19 Gallace, Alberto and Spence, Charles, In Touch with the Future: The Sense of Touch from Cognitive Neuroscience to Virtual Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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24 Julia Ruzicka (a bassist), in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 50.

25 Stephen Godfroy, in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 204.

26 Karen Emanuel, in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 167. Bickerdike's own introduction echoes this exact phrase, ending with the words ‘long live the vinyl record, to have and hold’: Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 17.

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30 Colleen Murphy (founder of the Classic Album Sundays listening events), in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 128.

31 Mike Ness (punk musician), in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 102.

32 Reynolds, Retromania, p. 235.

33 Sean Homer quoted in Winters, Vinyl Records and Analog Culture , p. 59.

34 Smith, Roger, ‘Kinaesthesia and Touching Reality’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 19 (2014)Google Scholar, pp. 3, 5, 27. See also Constance Classen, The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

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36 Godfroy, in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 204.

37 Corbett, Vinyl Freak, p. 62, Steve Hackett (guitarist and singer-songwriter), in Bickerdike, Why Vinyl Matters, p. 78.