Record Collecting 1: Articulation

I’m continuing to think about Record Store Day and why it appears to have upset more people this year. In my previous blog entry I focused on the corporatisation of the event, but other themes couldn’t help creeping in - articulation, structuralism, cup cakes. What much of it comes down to, I feel, is the changing nature of record collecting. There is a distinction between being a record collector (which was the old way of viewing of things) and being ‘into vinyl’ (which is perhaps taking over). There is also a question of just what it is that we’re collecting when we collect records: is it music, is it a format, and in what ways is it a bit of both?

Across a few blog entries I’m going to propose some different ways of looking at record collecting. I want to start by looking again at articulation and by trying to unpack the complex statement made by Spencer Hickman, the organiser of Record Store Day in the UK. He raised the following complaint about this year’s event: ‘It now feels like it’s not celebrating the culture of the record store and why they’re so good; it’s about the releases’.

            It’s hard to get to the bottom of this. Hickman could be arguing that record stores are about more than the music they sell. They are also hubs for people to get together; they offer a community service. He could be suggesting that not all of this year’s Record Store Day releases contained appropriate music. They are luring in One Direction and Herbert von Karajan fans, whereas an independent record store should be the preserve of Butthole Surfers and Gaye Bykers on Acid. He could be suggesting that records have a life of their own. As well as being the bearers of music, they are objects in their own right. This year’s Record Store Day could have attracted people who are interested in vinyl per se, rather than caring about the music it contains. 

            This duality of the analogue record has been a long-standing interest of mine. Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record is, in part, an attempt to analyze the relationship between the format and its music. This is the reason why I co-opted Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation. Hall stressed two uses of the word ‘articulate’: it can mean to speak forth and it can mean to join two items together. He argued, ‘An articulation is thus the form of connection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions’. For Hall, this unity has to be forged and it has to be argued for.

            This is what the indie community did with the vinyl record. They wished to unify this format with their own musical and economic cause. They did so in a structuralist manner. In his theory of linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure argues that ‘signs’ gain their meanings from their contrasts with other signs. For indie record labels and musicians the vinyl record was a sign, one that gained its meaning because it was everything that the compact disc was not. Vinyl was (or became through their agency) organic, hand-crafted, lo-fi, DIY. The format articulated the music and the music articulated the format.

            Hall argues that articulations can become disengaged and that different connections can be made. My previous blog entry was an attempt to look at some of the newer vinyl articulations that this year’s Record Store Day highlighted. Whereas indie record labels utilized the format to provide contrasts with the CD, independent record shops are advocating the format because of the alternatives it provides to the MP3. This is the whole ethos of Record Store Day: to encourage physical punters to buy physical records.

            As I stated, there is a potential danger in this. Record Store Day is perhaps too strongly focused on vinyl, rather than on music. In fact, it celebrates the way in which analogue records can restrict access to sound. Spencer Hickman has discovered that the effects of this are pernicious. In the first instance, the focus on records rather than music has allowed some unwelcome genres and record labels to enter the shops. Secondly, it has opened the shop doors to a group of punters who might be articulating the vinyl record in a different manner to either independent record labels or independent record stores.

            This is where I raised the spectre of the cup cake. It is possible that there is a new breed of vinyl collectors who articulate the format as a ‘kitsch frippery’. They like it because it represents quaint, old-fashioned values. If this really is the case, then it’s not surprising that Hickman is worried about the records taking over the stores. 

Whose Vinyl is it Anyway?

In Vinyl I argue that the analogue record has been articulated. It is a physical object and it is a carrier of music. Because of this dual nature, any associations with particular types of music have had to be forged. I also write about the way in which indie music sought jurisdiction over the format, in particular the 7” single. In the 1980s and 1990s, as the major labels turned to the CD and advanced that format for their own major stars, the vinyl record began to signify everything that was different. The indie labels articulated it for their own cause: it became the small-is-good format for small-is-good forms of music. This association continued. As I have written elsewhere, independent record labels were pre-eminent in the production of vinyl records in 2013.

            This year’s Record Store Day has revealed that this jurisdiction is under threat. For indie labels, the vinyl revival could have become too successful. The first Record Store Day was held in the US in 2007, when 700 independent record shops grouped together to celebrate their ‘unique culture’ and increase trade by selling records that were made exclusively for the day. The UK came on board in 2008 and Record Store Day now incorporates record shops in every continent except Antarctica. For vinyl, it is the most profitable retail day of the year.

In the UK the amount of exclusive releases has grown from around 250 in 2011 to nearly 650 this year. Record Store Day is like any other large orbiting body: its gravitational pull throws normal life out of joint. In the run up to the event, production in the few vinyl pressing plants that remain is taken up with limited edition Record Store Day products. There isn’t enough capacity to continue producing regular vinyl releases.

Some indie labels and distributors have grown suspicious of the pressing plants’ priorities. In an article in The Quietus, Phil Hebblethwaite has tabulated their woes. As early as 2011, Rob Sevier from the Numero Group was arguing that, for the record business, the logic of Record Store Day is ‘what can we shit into the form of a record and shove into the hands of the wanton masses’. This year the distributor Kudus has complained that ‘it feels like [Record Store Day] has been appropriated by major labels and larger indies to the extent that smaller labels who push vinyl sales for the other 364 days of the year are effectively penalised’. The label Modern Love has stated, ‘Fuck Record Store Day and all you self-righteous wankers who think it benefits anyone “independent”’ and ‘Fuck you to all the pressing plants out there who have made major labels their priority’.

Some independent labels are now boycotting Record Store Day. They feel that its original impetus is getting lost. For them, the sale of vinyl was supposed to serve independent record labels, which were supposed to release independent music, which was supposed to be sold in independent record shops. Despite the common cause of independence, the links between these parties can come loose. One potential source of tension is that independent record labels and independent record stores can have different reasons for advocating vinyl. While the labels' embrace of the vinyl record arose in opposition to the major record companies' advocacy of the CD, the independent record stores' current promotion of vinyl stems from their reaction to the MP3. This produces a different outlook. Record Store Day is focused wholly on limited edition records; what distinguishes vinyl from downloads and streams is that access to music can be restricted. And so, what if the Record Store Day releases are being bought and not heard? This doesn't do much to further the cause of indie music. Moreover, vinyl has no natural allegiance to indie ideals. If anything the format represents the opposite of DIY. It is the one form of sound carrier that is exclusively professional: there is no easy way in which you can make your own vinyl records at home. It is also the format that lends itself best to production gimmicks – coloured records, picture discs, shaped records, limited runs, and so on. It’s a great way of packaging shit for the wanton masses.

A lot has changed since the 1990s. CD sales have declined, while vinyl sales have risen (although it should not be forgotten that the former still vastly outperforms the latter). And where the CD used to be priced more expensively than vinyl, the two formats have traded places. Consequently, the majors have returned to vinyl. They have thought again about all those old gimmicks and realised that they are a great means of promoting their artists and of making money.

They clearly have the means to do this (reclaiming the pressing plants is a neat capitalist ploy), but why should independent record store shoppers buy the major label's vinyl releases? Here, it is once again worth thinking about vinyl and its articulations. There have long been problems regarding what it is that distinguishes ‘indie’ music: is it a generic type or is it the means of production? The problem for indie could be that vinyl has been articulating the music, rather than the other way round. If the major record companies choose to reacquaint themselves with indie's beloved analogue format, how easy is it to tell the difference between their releases and those of the indie labels? 

This is the point that is raised in a Record Store Day thought piece written by John Harris. He describes the event as being a ‘benefit for a struggling musical genre’; one that, like vinyl records themselves, is an object for nostalgia. This genre is massive, however. It is guitar-driven rock music, predominantly made by young white men and predominantly bought by older white men. Harris conflates the output of independent labels and major labels, as well of separate rock genres, such as psychedlia, punk and indie. More cruelly still, he sees little distinction between the new records and re-releases that are issued on Record Store Day. If the old records are retrospective, then so are the newer guitar-led groups. In this scenario, indie is no more than the genre that used to have jurisdiction over vinyl. It is now lost amongst the general drone of guitars that have taken hold of the format. In supporting all of these rock records, independent record stores might do well out of Record Store Day, but independent record labels' are losing one of their distinguishing features. 

In Harris's scenario, vinyl is at least still being associated with a particular strand of music. Elsewhere, there is evidence that the format has taken on a life of its own. Spencer Hickman, the organizer of the UK event, shares some of the concerns of independent record labels and distributors. He also raises some new ones. Not only is Record Store Day failing to support independent record labels, but the vinyl releases are failing to support independent record stores. He has stated, ‘this year feels like the first time it’s been entirely driven by capitalism. It now feels like it’s not celebrating the culture of the record store and why they’re so good; it’s about the releases’. In this vision it is as though the records have taken over the shops and are disrupting their normal practice. It’s not Hickman’s fault that the stores aren’t full of appropriate music, just look at what the vinyl has done?

This year’s Record Store Day included releases from One Direction and Herbert von Karajan, so any argument that it could be associated with a single genre – even one as broad as rock music – is moot. The question that then presents itself is whether the day could be associated with any music at all.  Perhaps the biggest fear for anyone with a longstanding interest in vinyl is that the format has slipped from being one that was the leading sound carrier in a golden age of popular music, to one that was fetishised because it was the leading sound carrier in a golden age of popular music, to one that is fetishised because it is old. Were the patrons of Record Store Day there because they like music, or were they instead celebrating the collection of outdated objects? Was their ‘culture of the record store’ just one of nostalgia for the days when people used to go to shops? In her excellent book Clampdown Rhian E Jones has added her voice to those who are worried about the retromania of our times. She states that ‘popular culture seems currently consumed by pastiche, recycling, solipsistic navel-gazing and pantomimes of authenticity, preoccupied with kitsch fripperies and politically disengaged, with previous traditions of protest and consciousness weakened, compromised, commodified, confused or forgotten’. One of her most dreaded objects is the cup cake. If any vinyl lovers are worried that their format is being constructed as a similar ‘kitsch frippery’ then they had better start articulating and they had better start agitating.