Bethany

I recently found two different vintage Ahmad Jamal recordings on vinyl at a local record store. On the first occasion, I looked at it in the store, and it was quite scuffed, but hope springs eternal, so I bought it and took it home and listened…and it has so much surface noise, it’s almost unlistenable. So then when I found the second album at the store a couple weeks later, I gave it a quick listen on a turntable in the store available for just this purpose. And again, alas, the infernal surface noise. I reluctantly left that one behind in the bins.

I keep listening to the one I own (partly because the music is really good, and partly out of stubbornness), but I still feel sad about its quality and also, nonsensically, about not buying the second one. The truth is I could instantly buy either one of those albums from Discogs in better condition, and at essentially the same price as the scuffed ones from the local shop, but there is something that is just infinitely more satisfying about stumbling across a used album you’ve been wanting in the wild, versus purchasing online whatever you desire the instant you desire it. The leap of excitement when you flip through a bin and find a gem – even if it ends up not actually being worth buying – is all part of the enjoyment of record collecting for me.