Music

The Origin of My Vinyl “Friends”

The Unexpected Joy of Vinyl Record Cataloguing

Last night, I poured myself a scotch, grabbed a stack of my records, turned on my phone flashlight, and booted up Discogs.

It was time to go on the treasure hunt of a lifetime.

What Prompted This?

Twelve hours earlier, I went to my Sunday flea market and dug through record bins, as always, looking for gold.

I was shocked when I found Hot Rats by Frank Zappa. Even though I still can’t decide how I feel about the man (I’m looking at you, Freak Out!), I’ve wanted this particular LP for a while. Seeing it out in the wild, without mold or gigantic knife carvings, made my hands shake.

But I almost fainted when I got home and realized what pressing it was.

How Do You Even Figure That Out?

If you’re unfamiliar, near the label at the record’s center is dead wax.

No, no. Don’t worry.

No one killed the wax.

It’s just an unplayable part of the record. On every record in the dead wax, there are inscriptions (and in the 50s-70s, these were done BY HAND) to identify what plant the record came from, who mastered the recording, and what edition it is.

Deciphering these kinds of things is a work of art, especially because they can be hard to read…Is that a cursive G or a lazy D?

Thankfully we live in a digital age and have a tool like the Discogs app that allows us to look up these dead wax matrix runs to figure out what we have.

So What Was So Special About That Zappa Record?

I’ll cut the suspense and tell you.

It was an original pressing. And it was in almost pristine condition. As expected, the cover had shown some age, but the record sounded like it had barely been played inside.

I know what you’re thinking. Oh my god. How much is it worth? Are you going to sell it? How much are you going to make?

But that wasn’t what it was about for me.

Was it possible to throw something on my record table that sounded the same as it did in 1969?

That was incredible.

One of the greatest joys about vinyl record collecting is feeling connected with the past in new ways.

Last night with Hot Rats, I was able to do that.

Getting To Know My “Friends”

And then I started thinking…

Where are my other records from? How old are they?

I started going through them one by one.

Sometimes the dead wax run wasn’t enough. There were more variants.

I’d have to identify if the cover was embossed or not. Was there a special sticker on the back of the album explaining that it was a promotional release? Was there a translucent “W” next to the bottom right corner?

How did they credit Duane Allman on this Laura Nyro album? It could be an older or newer pressing, depending on how they did it!

Three Yes pressings I had from Germany and an Elton John Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road from Canada. Wow, I marveled to myself. My vinyl is well-traveled.

As my cat purred beside me, my fiancée read her book, and I blasted Carole King’s Tapestry (on LP, OF COURSE), I found myself having a ton of fun.

Cataloguing a record collection sounded boring and painstaking, but it ended up being a joyous activity that brought me closer to my music.

So Where Is This All Going?

If you’re worried about going through your old vinyl records and categorizing them, once you get down the basics of learning how to read the dead wax numbers, it’s way less intimidating than you expect.

Discogs have made it incredibly easy (including even pictures of labels) to know exactly which pressing you have.

And I’m not perfect. There were a couple of times I thought I had something truly unique, then realized I read a matrix number wrong. But that’s part of the learning process…and, honestly, part of the fun!

Handling each record, looking over their covers, their paper sheets, and reading the inscriptions, it’s hard not to feel connected and nostalgic for an era I wasn’t born in.

Although cataloguing can seem boring and a huge drag, it made me realize what I really had and where my “friends” came from for the first time.

So the next time I spin Fragile, I’ll think about some German man (or woman!) fifty years ago inscribing the run by hand.

Then imagine all the years and hands it passed through to make its way to my turntable in 2023.

Hope that helps.

Love you all.

I’m Bill. I write about music and spirituality.

I’m listening to 1001 Must-Hear Albums Before You Die in a Year and documenting it on Youtube.

Give me a follow if you like my vibe.