“Vinyl is great, but the music is even better,” Matt Black of Coldcut once said. Since I went to see Alan Zweig’s documentary Vinyl at EMP last week, that comment has been echoing in my ears like a gunshot.
Vinyl is a compelling, unsettling look at obsessive record collectors. Sitting in a theater filled with many folks who, like myself, could just as easily have been up on-screen, I listened as these eccentric specimens (including the director) addressed all-too-familiar questions. Are the countless hours devoted to trawling used-record bins, investigating new discoveries, and making mix tapes nothing more than defense mechanisms to avoid fostering social relationships? How can you expect friends to visit when the only places to sit are buried under stacks of musty 101 Strings albums?
Several of the interviewees wished they could stop building their collections and get back in touch with music. That hit home. Granted, stemming the tide of records flowing into my apartment would entail a career switch, but even if I never received another promo, I’d still have to curtail the endless Goodwill and library sale finds I pick up for a dollar or two every week. Sheer volume precludes me from developing a deep emotional attachment to 99 percent of my records. There isn’t enough time.
Many days, after I get done perusing the many records I need to for work, I don’t want to listen to anything else, period. But recently, in a conscious effort to recharge my batteries, I’ve been investing in acknowledged classics that I previously skipped. If critics have been hailing it as a masterpiece for over a quarter century, odds are I’m going to get more out of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks than some untested new release selected at random.
But more importantly, I’ve been replacing on CD the pivotal albums that I only own on decaying homemade cassette tapes or never bought for myself. Which was how I came to rediscover Daevid Allen’s 1977 full-length Now Is the Happiest Time of Your Life.
Do not be embarrassed if this title isn’t ringing a bell—it shouldn’t. But in eighth grade, it was one of the most important records in my life. My “punk” friend Laura loaned it to me one afternoon. Since her last offering had been an Iggy Pop LP, I wasn’t prepared for the mellow sounds that came wafting out of Dad’s speakers when I popped on the album featuring a grinning hippie on the cover.
The founder of the seminal European psychedelic ensemble Gong, Allen was dabbling in realms far beyond my limited knowledge of music—which was based primarily on my parents’ classical LPs and local FM rock radio—on his third solo album. Singing songs about pixies and flying teapots one moment, then asking listeners, “Why Do We Treat Ourselves Like We Do?” the next, he struck a balance between childish delight and contemplative adulthood that resonated with my adolescent psyche. A playful jolt of rockabilly (“See You on the Moontower”), the rapid finger-picking and thrumming tablas of “Flamenco Zero,” and space guitars writing vapor trails across a blue sky (the 11-minute meditation “I Am”) all co-existed harmoniously here.
But somehow, I never got around to purchasing my own copy. It wasn’t a record one just picked up at the mall. So when I flipped past a pristine copy of Now . . . at a convention last month, I almost shelled out the $20 asking price without a second thought. At the last minute, I decided to check its availability on CD first. Having gone without hearing it in its entirety in 20 years, I could wait a couple more weeks.
Now Is the Happiest Time of Your Life did come out on CD via a small French label, and I don’t think there’s been a day since I got mine that it hasn’t wound up on the stereo. At first, much of it struck my ears as unadulterated silliness—until I realized that my jaded, grown-up sensibilities needed a dose of exactly that. It doesn’t make me feel nostalgic, either. We just picked up where we left off, this modest little album giving me a spirited reminder that pop music is full of boundless possibilities, blessed with the ability to transport you somewhere fantastic, far beyond the realms of everyday life.
I don’t anticipate my collecting grinding to a halt tomorrow. The day after I saw Vinyl, I stopped in at one of my favorite used-record dealers and whiled away an hour. But I definitely feel a shift in my attitude since reconnecting with Daevid Allen. That slim CD of Now Is the Happiest Time . . . hardly takes up any space on the sofa, and while it may not be flesh and blood, it still feels like an old friend dropped in.
