Record albums are still spinning after all these years because some people just love the way they sound.
By Daniel Hartill
Staff Writer
LEWISTON
Clayton Sanders talks about the plate-sized discs the way one of his Bates College professors might describe an artifact from the Civil War.

“I found this one at the Salvation Army,” said Sanders. “It was from somebody named Jackson Browne. I think it was called ‘Running on Empty.'”

The 21-year-old discovered the record album, one of the biggest-selling of the 1970s, in the thrift store’s 59-cent bin. It has joined a crate of records that he totes between his room in Lewiston and his home in Amherst, Mass.

“I guess I have always been drawn to older things,” said Sanders. “I just like records.”

He’s not alone.

A variety of people hold on to vinyl.

They include young folks looking for cheap music and hip-hop DJs using pairs of turntables to mix and combine separate recordings. There are also older audiophiles, baby boomers who have hundreds of records and high-end stereos able to create a range of sounds that they say compact discs cannot.

For all of a CD’s clarity, the sound is sterile, they say. Something is lost when music goes digital.

The difference is that records are created from engineered tapes, recorded onto masters and pressed into albums with a directness that’s gone in the digital age.

For a compact disc to be made, the music must be reduced to a digital series of ones and zeroes, and rebuilt again.

Michael Dixon, a psychologist from Auburn, buys CDs but listens to his records when he can.

“The only way I can say it is that they sound warm,” Dixon said. “They seem to fill up a room better.”

In the groove

For people like Dixon, a niche market in records has opened up.

At Bull Moose Music in Lewiston, two shelves of new records sit beside the cash register. Most are hip-hop music. Sprinkled among the titles are classic rock titles, such as Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti” and the Grateful Dead’s “American Beauty.”

Online operations, such as www.acousticsounds.com, sell new records, turntables and needles. Local stores such as Sears sell record players, but only with other components built in.

At some of Bull Moose’s other locations, used albums have come back on sale. Both Portland and Waterville have thriving record stores.

“I think it’s growing,” said Joseph Maurey, who manages Bates College’s radio station, WRBC. He knows several students who have collections and record players.

Besides the sound, some people are drawn to the cover art, which gets shrunk to a quarter of the size when it lands on a CD.

There is also a lot more music available for people whose taste runs to older or more eclectic music than current trends.

Record man

Bill Cartmel makes part of his living by selling rare records over the Internet, primarily auctioning them on the eBay Web site.

His Lewiston home is filled with shelf upon shelf of old records, each carefully wrapped in plastic.

“My motto is: ‘It’s in my collection until I sell it,'” said Cartmel, who has been so successful with his online business that he quit his day job five years ago. Under the name of Bill Muraldo, he was a TV journalist, last working for the Maine PBS show “MaineWatch.”

A specialist in musicals and soundtracks, Cartmel sells records around the world.

“Japan and the U.K. are my best customers,” he said. “I don’t know what it is about people there.”

They love their records. The Japanese are particularly finicky about the condition of albums.

That’s only natural for parts of the world where jazz or blues are particularly loved. For every album that has been reissued on CD, there are several others that will never make it to the more modern medium.

“Think about Frank Sinatra,” said Cartmel. “He’s about as beloved as they come. But he has many, many albums that have never made it to CD. He issued probably 200.”

Among collectors, the most in-demand records are the ones people have probably forgotten.

“This may sound simple, but it’s the rare stuff that’s rare,” he said. “I already have several copies of ‘The Sound of Music.'”

Vinyl heaven

There are no copies of “The Sound of Music” in Roger Poulin’s collection, whose first album was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Cosmos Factory.”

He bought it when he was a kid, and he stills owns a copy of the rock staple. When other people gave up their records in the ’80s, he kept his.

Now 44, Poulin hosts a weekly show called “Vinyl Heaven” on the Bates College radio station.

His songs draw from his classic rock tastes. It’s a chance for him to share his music with people who may never have heard it.

He’s also sharing the medium.

In recent years, he’s had to show some of the young DJs how to play records.

He shows up at each show with his own record duster and cleaning fluid in a pouch. He teaches the students how to hold the LPs and dust them.

Many have never used a turntable. They get scared of the arm or worry they’ll scratch the record.

It’s made him pessimistic about vinyl’s future.

“I don’t think it’s going to come back,” he said. “There’s going to be a small market for it. And then, we’ll be gone.”

He’s training another generation, though. His 6-year-old son, David, watches him play records at home.

“He calls them ‘big CDs,'” Poulin said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com

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