Vinyl madness

I was at home enjoying an online episode of Tales of the Texas Rangers when my daughter interrupted me, wanting something on Amazon.

Just to explain, Tales of the Texas Rangers was a 1950s NBC radio series featuring Joel McCrea as Ranger Jayce Pearson. There are 90 half-hour episodes available online. Once you tire of binge-listening to these, there are perhaps 200 more episodes of Dragnet and about 400 of Gunsmoke to choose from, the latter featuring the voice of William Conrad (detective Frank Cannon to anyone my age) as Marshal Matt Dillon.

Yes, I realise it’s a bit weird using a fibre-optic broadband connection to listen to 1950s radio, but not half as strange as my daughter’s request. You see, she wanted me to buy her a record.

Not an album, you understand, but a bloody record. ‘Vinyl’, they call it. For 22 bloody quid.

I patiently explained that there was no need to buy records any more since someone had invented something called the internet. Besides, I already pay £15 a month for Spotify’s top-of-the-range Catholic Family Pack (or whatever it’s called), so we can stream music on eight devices simultaneously. We have more Bluetooth speakers than we have ears. So why in God’s name would she want a record?

It’s not as though she is a passionate audiophile with a Linn Sondek turntable and £150-a-foot gold speaker cables hand-woven by Austrian dwarves (I get the fact that, for purists and neurotics, vinyl records still win). Her record player is some kind of retro suitcase design that belongs in an episode of Happy Days. And it’s not a collectable record she wanted. Had she suddenly become a devotee of northern soul, that might have made sense. But the thing she is buying is contemporary.