The Price of Nostalgia
Music legend Sergio Mendes died last week. Reading his obituary put me in the mood to listen to his music, so I played my CD of his greatest hits album. Multiple times.
I first bought this album as an LP when I was in college, then replaced it with a CD some years later. Listening to it last week, I realized that I knew two of the songs so much better than the others — the intro, the lyrics, how long to hold each note. (Yes, I sing along.) I wondered if I had owned these two songs as 45s.
My sister and I collected 45s and kept them in a round, pink plastic case with a handle. We started as children, and I bought my last 45 when I was in my early 20’s. We didn’t have a huge collection – only 48 of them. I know that because we kept a list that lived in the case. (We were very organized children.)
I don’t know how I ended up being the holder of this relic of our childhood, but it lives on the top shelf of my closet. I haven’t had a record player in over 30 years so I haven’t looked inside for a long time. But my curiosity about the two Sergio Mendes songs that I knew so intimately spurred me to get my stepstool and bring the case down.
Sure enough, “The Look of Love” and “The Fool on the Hill” were numbers 14 and 15 in our collection. Reviewing the list of 48 records we had bought, I was filled with nostalgia. I wanted to listen to them all!
My first thought was to have them digitized. But then I had another, more sensible thought. I had recently subscribed to Spotify. Would it be possible to put together a playlist of all of these songs on Spotify? I got onto Spotify and started searching.
Fifteen minutes later, I had a playlist called “My 45s”, all of them by the same artists who are on my records. I have been listening to it when I’m out and about, and I’ve been enjoying it thoroughly. My sister and I had good taste!
Another alternative would be to purchase each individual song on iTunes. I did a quick survey of about 10 of the songs and found that they sold for 99 cents or $1.29 each. So purchasing all 48 would cost me less than $60, which is far less than it would have cost to ship my record case to a digitizing company and pay for them to be transferred.
Many of my clients have record albums — shelves of LPs that they never play. When asked, some of them express interest in having them digitized someday. This is, to me, a way of postponing the ultimate decision of what to do with these relics. If the albums are available digitally, it’s better (and cheaper) to repurchase them rather than digitize them.
I have no doubt that if I had digitized my 45s, I would have been unhappy with the quality. Listening to records, you got used the little scratches and crackles that were inevitable from frequent use. But I would have less tolerance for them today.
Do you have records – LPs or 45s — that you’ve been holding on to but can’t even play anymore? Consider keeping your favorites as memorabilia and ditching the rest. Purchase any beloved music online, or listen to it on whatever services you subscribe to.