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8/19/2015

So just about 30 years ago, I was opening a bunch of boxes that had just arrived. They contained Intrada's very first release. Red Dawn. Vinyl in those days. I'd worked with Basil Poledouris on the album some three months earlier, mixing and editing it at the famed MGM Studios Scoring Stage 1, now Sony. The same place where Basil had conducted some 89 players in recording the score. It was a dream come true.

So the records looked great. They sounded great. Basil came up to our shop and signed copies that same day. He visited with fans and helped ensure our first release wasn't our last. No internet. No message boards. And yet, somehow in those prehistoric times, word still got around, the shop was packed all day and everything fell into place just right.

We switched to CDs during the next few years and produced our last vinyl release at the end of the decade. Warlock. Jerry Goldsmith this time. So fast forward to today. Another fantasy fulfilled. Yep. I speak of vinyl again. I just opened a box containing a half dozen 180 gram test pressings for the first of several vinyl releases on target for release in the months ahead. It actually feels weird. Like time machines really exist. I make no claim that these platters will replace the CD format and I wouldn't want them to. CDs have changed my life. Improved it. Yours, too. But how many other things in life can we take a trip backwards like this and yet find ourselves still in the present. Who could've seen the handwriting this time? Did vinyl ever go away? I don't know, but I have a huge library of records on my shelves. They've been ignored for a really long spell. What a joy it is to find myself adding more to those shelves again after all these years. So now I get to find out. Will a 30-year old needle still work?

If not, at least I'll still have these things on CD.

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