What's up, King Grit here. I'm from Philadelphia, 43 years old, and I collect vinyl, all mediums
of music, actually, but vinyl's my favorite, and yeah, here we go. I love your site, Dustin
Groves. You featured me on the site, and I was a fan of the site even before you featured
me, and the reason is, I just think, you know, vinyl, these are pieces of art, not just the
music, but the covers, and it all tells a story, and it's a physical, you can hold it,
you know, today's society, we have MP3s, but music's so disposable, like we lose it, you
have a whole drive of MP3s, there's no nothing making them stand out, you know. Vinyl, you
have all these beautiful covers, a lot of work has gone into the covers, and the covers
are supposed to represent what's on the vinyl, what's on the music, you know. So, I just
think that, all in all, it's just a more exciting medium to collect, and yeah, I love it.
It's so important to preserve vinyl, I mean, it's just like, you know, basically, us as
collectors, we're archeologists of sound, and you know, the quote-unquote term, digging,
that's where it comes from, you know, you dig, you go to a dig for archeology, you find
bones and things, items from the past, which give you an idea of what society was at that
moment, the same with vinyl, it's like, you look at the date, you look at who's playing
on it, you look at maybe the cover, looking for political statements or whatever, and
you can kind of piece together what the times were like when this piece of vinyl came out,
you can even figure out what people's reactions could be to just by looking at the cover or
just by listening to it. So, it's super important to preserve it. These are sound bites of a
generation on the time, you know, it's time captured on audio.
You know, CDs don't last, vinyl lasts, unless you leave it in the sun or something, but
you can vinyl last forever, I mean, they're 78s from the 20s and 30s that you can still
play today, but CDs only last about, I think, eight years to ten years until they start
to lose their fidelity and sound. So, yeah, I just think that, and plus the history of
vinyl, how it's made, how it's manufactured, it's really an amazing process. So, I think
all of that should be preserved. Even though I play, when I DJ, I play digital files and
I use a computer, I don't even use CDs anymore, because it's become more of a performance
than just playing vinyl, plus traveling, you can't really carry the vinyl. But I do miss
being able to play that out, you know, but, yeah. I'm really excited about the actual
vinyl research, just because what's always kind of been hip and cool, but now the kind
of indie rock kids have kind of discovered, oh, we need to put out seven inches of our
brand new indie track, and I think it spawned from that kind of excitement to go to a medium
that was anti-MP3. It was like a revolution, basically, like vinyl's back, and now it's
kind of grown into this, oh, it's really back, it's cool to have it. It's easier to get,
you know, these portable turntables now, and I don't know, it's just the hip and cool
thing to have again. So, I'm very excited about it, and actually, I just put out a new
EP and the label, hyperdub, put it on vinyl, and I just got them the other day, and I was
like, wow, because I haven't had a piece of vinyl on my own.
Do you want to show it? Do you have it here? Yeah. And yeah, hyperdub's a really big quote
unquote dubstep electronic experimental label, and I did a record called Floasting Paradise,
which is very kind of science fiction inspired by Blade Runner and John Carpenter and all
that sort of thing, so they just put it out on vinyl, sold out in a week, which is pretty
cool. And yeah, this is the cover.
You know, I think it's a generational thing, you know, people of our generation, their
memories, so, you know, well, your average person who goes back to vinyl, not a collector,
these have memories, you know, it's like someone may see this in a store, they may be at a
bookstore and it has vinyl, and they say, oh man, I remember, as soon as you see vinyl,
you're like, I remember, you know, say it's Phil Collins or whatever, you're like, I remember
when I was on a date and this played or whatever, their time capsules, they trigger memories,
right? For a collector, you know, it's a number of things, it's like the first record you
ever bought, like this one is my first, one of my first ones that I ever bought and always
go back to it, over and over. G.D. Bridgewater, just family, and she's one of my favorite
artists, actually put out one of her 12 inch records about five years ago, and China Moses,
which is her daughter, is a good friend of mine, she's in the belly actually, and I always
go back to this whenever I'm feeling down or just to kind of lift spirits or have fun
again. I'll play, uh, it's bad, but, uh, bad record, bad record.
And it's like, it's so soulful, you got all the influences, gospel, funk, jazz, uh, it's
crazy. It might be too loud. Her voice, diddy, man. She, you know, she spent a lot of time
in Philly in the 70s, she played on everybody's records, especially jazz, that many vocalists
could do what she did with her voice as an instrument, yeah. But this record has many
memories, my parents. It's, it's like today, a sunny day, like, and this says it all, man,
it's a family, like. It's cool. Bad record. Many people use that.
I really had a lot of records as a kid because, uh, my dad would take me to the record store
on Chester Avenue was near where I grew up. And, um, they always gave me promos. They
gave me promo 12, 45, like, here we got extra, as a kid might like these. Yeah. Yeah. Cause,
uh, my dad, you know, he owned a barber shop. So they figured, you know, he played in a shop
or whatever, whatever. But they would give it to me knowing that my dad would play him.
So I had this crazy collection of stuff. I don't even remember what half of it was,
but whatever it was, it was the newest up to date stuff. But I was addicted to video games.
And so there was a place here in Philly. It's still around, actually called Plastic Fantastic.
Uh, they had two locations, one in Ardmore, which is, I think, still there. And then one
at 40th and Chestnut Market near my dad's barber shop. So one day, man, it was just like
asteroids that come out, Defender, like all these games. And I was just like, yo, I don't
need these records. So I took hundreds of records and we had two wagons, big wagons
of records and we rolled them over to the record store. I just remember the dude's eyes
like lighting up like, oh, we'll give you, you know, we made like a hundred bucks or
maybe 50 bucks, which was huge for us. You know, stuff was a quarter where we're going,
you know? So we had money for like weeks to go to the arcade. And, you know, it's funny
because my friend Skeen, who lives in Philly, you know, where there's a place up the street
called Barcade that just opened. So it's every arcade game, but it's also a bar. And it's
like, there's one in Brooklyn too, so they opened here. And me and Skeen, he was addicted
to games too. So we're going to battle each other and like joust at asteroids. But anyway,
I regret to this day, like, I don't even remember what I had, but I know it was something because
those guys are like super excited. And I wasted that money in like two weeks, like playing
asteroids. But I'm really good at asteroids. All right, all right, at least. So I'm a huge
fan of Ultraman since I was little. And Ultraman was Japanese character. And, you know, in the
late 70s, late 70s, early 80s, there was a channel in Philly called Channel 48. They
only played Japanese shows. So it was like Johnny Sacco and his flying robot, Ultraman,
Speed Racer, which is Japanese, really. So always, you know, going to Japan, you know,
as an older person, going to Japan, seeing all the Ultraman stuff, because it's still
huge there as far as collecting the toys and stuff. So I saw this record, my friend Machizuki,
it was in a record store or whatever. Oh my God, Ultraman, but it wasn't for sale. And
a few years later, it was like my birthday. And I was in Japan. And Machizuki gave me
the record man. This is an original Ultraman record with booklet. And that's what's cool
too about a lot of, I don't have booklets. And all the teams, yes, it's crazy. So I was
happy to get it. And it's one of my prized possessions.
