Maybe I'm ready for vinyl...
I’m back in Portland after spending most of last week and most of the weekend in Toronto. I spoke at Strive: The UX Research Conference, which was meticulously designed from start to finish. Conferences are such a weird experience. Sometimes, I see friends and that’s rad. Other times, it’s just me with a bunch of well-intentioned strangers and I’m too awkward to really take advantage.
This conference put us speakers up in one of those boutique hotels with like 30 rooms — they rented the whole thing out — and the rooms had phonographs in each room, with some records curated by a local record shop. (You could take the records, and they’d just charge your room.)
Note: the picture of the room above isn’t meant to be a flex. I just wanted to talk about records.
So the room had a record player and I thought, “oh how cute.” And then didn’t feel like I’d engage with it much at all. Instead, every night I was there, I winded my evening down by putting on some records. The selection outside of the jazz - (Alice & John Coltrane, and Kanye West’s The College Drop album) was wanting, but that has more to do with my tastes than anything to do with theirs.
Anyway, I played records and found it really cathartic. The difference maker was their phonograph was hooked up to a single speaker that was really effective — it had bluetooth capabilities too — and that made it easier for me to envision doing that in my own minimalist home setup. Prior to seeing that, I’d assumed setting up speakers would be too intensive to bother with.
Also, I tend to change tunes a lot. I thought the annoyance of changing records would be a deterrent, but it wasn’t. I’m excited about the idea of buying some of my favorite albums and keeping them around. I own a few records now, but besides the ones I know I want (Kamasi Washington’s The Epic is one…) there are lots of crate digger type records that I’m excited not just to find (I frequent record stores…) but to actually buy and keep.
Stay tuned for this summer project. That said, I’ll have to figure out how to scrobble whatever I play on vinyl. Tracking my listening has been one of my favorite hobbies since college.
Things I read this week: I just ran across this Interview magazine article with famous folk/friends interviewing Courtney Love. It’s got a few quotable moments.
This is my 2019 playlist of whatever stuff I hear that I want to keep. Owing to my shifting tastes, I’ve added pop I’ve heard at coffee shops to it. It’ll be as eclectic as you’d expect, but certainly less (shoe)gaze-forward than you’d come to expect from me.
Albums I’m listening to:
(I was traveling, so honestly, I played some vinyl and that playlist…but the others keep showing up.)
Ari Lennox - Shea Butter Baby
Steve Lacy - XXI
Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda
BROCKHAMPTON - Saturation II
Let me know what you’re listening to.