Dweezil Zappa World

What’s so much more fun than going to school and getting socially harassed or dealing with work?

Why, staying home and somehow managing to get your padrushka to open up the closet and find all his crates with the LPs in them, of course.

How did I manage to do that? Why, I have magical powers, of course.

No? That answer doesn’t work for you?

Honestly, I mentioned it to El Padre in passing. Fifteen minutes later, he was digging through our closets, trying to find where he had put his crates full of LPs.

Once he found them, I brought him a stool and we sat, flipping through the crates, looking for the cool ones to look at in more detail.

Soon, there was a whole pile of them. Yes, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Talking Heads were only a few of the many that my father apparently owned (which includes 2 copies of Thriller, for some inconceivable reason).

Once everything was done, I took my pile to the dining room and sat down at the table. I looked at each one meticulously, reading through the lyrics, the credit listings, looking at the pictures and just enjoying holding the records.

For me, it was a new experience, and a great one at that. I never knew how much you missed out on by buying a CD or downloading the digital mp3 files. There were the credit listings, the lyrics, the inside flap, the photos…El Padre even taught me how to hold a record without actually touching it, so as not to get the oil of your fingers on it.

While every album was amazing to actually look at in its original form, it was (of course) Frank’s that hit home the hardest. But the most touching experience of all of them was when I was looking at Apostrophe (‘). Reading the listings, looking at the pictures and remembering the lyrics were just too much.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not ashamed to say it: I broke down and cried.

It wasn’t that I was sad that I had never really known how much I was missing when I was just getting the mp3s. It was just that for me, holding the record was too much. Mp3s are digital; you only see them on a screen. But when you have an LP, it’s tangible. It’s something you’re holding and reading and listening to and just feeling.

Or at least, it was something that I was holding and reading that was bringing out a lot of emotion.

Bottom line?

Vintage shops are about to get a lot more of my business…