Music that you can embrace

This one goes in English 'cause I really want a good friend of mine to be able to read it thus, apologies to my local friends, deal with it my dears.

Some time ago, whilst having some - quite a lot must say hahaha - drinks at my place we were listening to vinyl records which have become, in the recent years, quite fashionable if not posh.

Well, I'm from a generation that grew up to vinyl records, there were no such things as streaming, download or internet radios. If you were really into music the only way to get in touch with new releases and new bands was through a few local magazines or, if you could afford it, imported ones such as NME and others.

The main conduit for getting new music was going to the record shops located in what we call GALERIA DO ROCK - something like ROCK MALL in a free translation - which were actually two different 'malls': one indeed more specialized in rock on its purest or hardest version and other more specialized in indie bands, gothic and other assorted music and which was my preferred spot.

But before going there you had to know exactly what you wanted, records back then were way too expensive and, not surprisingly at all and still true today, local stores sold only what the major record labels wanted so the bands and artists you liked were most of the time out of the range of your wallet.

What we used to do was getting as much information we could on the band or artist we wanted and only then go to the mall and to specific stores not to buy the record itself since that would require sometimes a whole year of savings but ask the owner to 'tape' the records we wanted.

We would inform him the records we wanted taped, he would name his price - the cassete tape would either be ours or bought from him at a very reasonable price - and tell us to come back in a few days or weeks depending on what we had ordered, rare albums would take more time whilst more 'popular' ones would be ready in a couple of days.

Those tapes would then be passed from hand to hand till sometimes they got so worn out that they sounded like a broken radio. From those tapes we would then select the bands we liked the most and then save money to buy the actual record, in vinyl.

We would then pass on the records we bought kinda in a way of a book club and that's when you got in touch with a whole lot of new bands, it was a time of LISTEN TO THIS, LISTEN TO THAT and so on, access to music was so difficult that we valued each and every chance we got back then.

Not saying that the internet, streaming and others killed music, I really love it cause it is practical and you don't have to carry a CD case with the music you want to hear during the day what could be quite tiring, anyone who had a portable CD player knows what I'm talking about.

You can now get in touch with new music in a fast and easy way but you still have to do some research even if the streaming algorithm is there to push you into new bands based on what you listen, that is the machine telling you what to listen to and even though it is quite tempting and easy, I still believe that the best way to get in touch withe new music is doing that search yourself, use the machine logic in your favor but most of all read magazines and online publications about music, follow bands and artists on social media and mainly, talk to people that love music as much as you, nothing can replace or ever take place of human contact, talking to other people about music and sharing tastes, opinions and impressions, that is something no machine will ever be able to do.

And that is something vinyl will never loose. Even though digital and online music made our lives much easier, the ritual of touching and album, taking the record out of its sleeve, placing it on the turntable, picking up the needle gently and slowly dropping it on that thin space before the first track is magical, ritualistic, is a bond that digital music will never be able to reproduce.

Or, as my great Scottish mate would say, that's music you can embrace...