Arts

As much of a fan of digital music as I am, there’s still something cool about old vinyl records. Sadly, though, East Nashville is without much in the way of a true, old-school record store these days. The recent exchange of The Groove for a new and improved Eastside Cycles was great for cycling on this side of town, but it also means there’s really nowhere left on this side of town where you can flip through dust jackets instead of scrolling through a list of MP3s, other than in private collections – and we all know that there are a lot of excellent record collections on this side of the river.

Ben Blackwell, Third Man's main man of vinyl

The owners of the largest of those collections and folks who have worked in the record business here in Nashville for decades are the two groups of people I can think of who might know as much about vinyl as Ben Blackwell, the head of vinyl production at Jack White’s Third Man Records in the shadow of downtown Nashville. But if anyone else has his kind of knowledge, especially at the age of 28, I’d be surprised.

Ever find yourself wondering, “What’s the entire process of making a record look like from beginning to end?” Or maybe, “Why are 180-gram vinyl pressings superior to lighter pressings?” Ever wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “What’s the value of small, independent, vinyl-producing record labels in the digital age?” Lucky for you, Ben Blackwell shares the answers to all these questions and more in a pretty fascinating interview about all things vinyl with Dean Schaffer over at Collectors Weekly. Go check it out and get your fix while we wait for another record store to open up here on the east side.

Reading all this material about vinyl makes me wonder – who has the biggest record collection of all our readers? Let me know in the comments. Oh, and photos or it’s not real!