Vinyl Continues to Make a Comeback

Link to December 6 New York Times article, "Vinyl Records and Turntables Are Gaining Sales".

Excerpt: At a glance, the far corner of the main floor of J&R Music looks familiar to anybody old enough to have scratched a record by accident. There are cardboard boxes filled with albums by the likes of Miles Davis and the Beach Boys that could be stacked in any musty attic in America.

But this is no music morgue; it is more like a life-support unit for an entertainment medium that has managed to avoid extinction, despite numerous predictions to the contrary. The bins above the boxes hold new records — freshly pressed albums of classic rock as well as vinyl versions of the latest releases from hip-hop icons like 50 Cent and Diddy and new pop stars like Norah Jones and Lady Gaga.

And with the curious resurgence of vinyl, a parallel revival has emerged: The turntable, once thought to have taken up obsolescence with reel-to-reel and eight-track tape players, has been reborn.

I confess; I spent way too much time studiously flipping through record bins during the 1970s. And most of the vinyl I purchased has been "redistributed". (Saying "thrown out" is just too painful.) I held onto to a few dozen titles that I was unable to find on CD. (Hookfoot's Good Times a' Comin', for example.) But I haven't owned a working turntable since the late 1980s.)