15 July,2021 06:09 AM IST | Mumbai | Shunashir Sen
Before the pandemic, congregating at pop-up vinyl sales was a great way for enthusiasts to add to their collection
I think that I have started listening to more things that I hadn't heard before, because buying has slowed down. There was a fire at a vinyl plant in California in early 2020 that created a huge global supply-chain bottleneck; the prices of vinyls went up by about 30 per cent during the pandemic. Earlier, I would keep buying new LPs and listening to them, but now I got a chance to go back and listen to what I already had. I've generally been buying vinyls directly from the labels or amazon.uk. There are sites like discogs.com and importcds.com, too, which sell records. There is also a vinyl sub-Reddit on reddit.com that is a helpful place to find new releases, but I think that enthusiasts were in a better place when people could congregate. There is a lot more hoarding going on right now and people have become more selfish. That community feeling isn't there anymore. Earlier, I would enjoy going to Chor Bazaar and finding an LP for a band I hadn't heard before, buying it for 50 bucks no matter how crappy the condition was. But the fun of doing that is kind of gone - the economics interrupted the fun of it.
People who have a large collection of vinyls didn't need to replenish it during the pandemic, because this was a time when they could revisit what they already had in their collection. Earlier you would travel for four-five hours a day sometimes and work for even longer, so there was hardly a window to spend on your collection. It's thus kind of paradoxical, where you can't acquire new music as much as you could before, but you're spending more time listening to LPs on the whole. The Revolver Club [in Mahim] has an online store. But there's this sheer joy of browsing through records at a physical store that has gone out of the window with steaming devices coming in. Look at what happened to Rhythm House. We would also go to places like Zenzi that would have vinyl listening sessions on Sunday afternoons, where one party room would be cordoned off and people would take turns every week to play records from their collection. But Zenzi, too, shut down.
I am a student of music and learnt from Ustad Amanat Husain Khan Saab of the Agra gharana. The genre of music that I am most passionate about is ghazals and I have sourced records from different places like Mumbai, Delhi, Amsterdam and London. There are also some online players; there is one source in Delhi, Mr Zafar. He runs a store called Shah Music Centre in Meena Bazaar and has a collection of over one lakh LPs. I also ask my friends abroad to source vinyls I want, in case they can find them. Earlier, I used to buy many records from Rhythm House before it shut down, and I must say that Mr Mehmood Curmally [of Rhythm House] initiated me into the world of vinyl music. But unfortunately, today's generation doesn't seem to care as much because it requires a lot of passion and upkeep, while they just want Spotify.
According to the website vinylrestart.com, people who were teenagers in the 1980s and '90s account for 45 per cent of the vinyl-buying market. Also, music platform billboard.com's survey showed that in America, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and David Bowie are among the bands that are the biggest drivers of vinyl sales.
Jethro Tull fans were treated to a fabulous surprise in 1994 when Ian Anderson, frontman of the Brit cult-rock outfit, showed up at the now-shuttered Rhythm House in Kala Ghoda to sign audio cassettes for them. The band was due to perform at Rang Bhavan, a one-time popular concert venue in what was then Bombay.
