One of the conditions of my great move west was that I do it unencumbered by the vast stores of shit I had accumulated in my 20 plus years in Cambridge.

I had not one but two yard sales in preparation, and I gave countless treasures to charities. (And, to some neighbors who decided to pick apart and rip up and throw around all manner of bags and boxes I had left in my side yard for the Boys and Girls Clubs before they could show up. I’m pretty sure the most flagrant destroyer was the chick who flat out fought with me over some gewgaw or another and the usurious 75 cents I was charging. She looked me right in the eye and told me my life’s accumulations were garbage.)

Anywho, among the items lost in the westward expansion were a lifetime’s worth of vinyl. Actually, I think it was a couple of lifetimes, because there were my records, begun with my very first ever long-playing vinyl record the Beatles “Rock and Roll Music,” and a couple of giant crates an old roommate left behind before he eventually moved out of this country.

A huge metric ton of the records were bought by some heavy-metal-haired dude who was visiting friends in the apartment next door. He also got my shitty, but fun enough to tool around with, bright blue electric guitar and my actually pretty good Fender amp.

It was a fair enough trade to not have to move all of that weight, which actually had been moved in milk crates and wooden boxes through at least five geographical locations, if you count not just cities but apartments. By then I think I was onto my second iPod anyway, and I never ever was the kind of audiophile who needed my chair inside the perfect acoustic V or gave that much of a shit about the hisses and pops of dust and scratches. I bid adieu to my old Beatles records, Janis and “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” which was a must own circa 1978, and much, much more.

Now, the move to California is four years in and growing. We’ve been in two apartments and now a house. Thanks to a 30-year mortgage and an easy stroll to the ocean, that last move seems like it may be a long-term keeper. (As a side note, I flipped through the report on sea levels and their rise from climate change, if all goes poorly, as I’m sure it will, within our mortgage we’ll be inching closer to ocean-front property.)

Here’s the ironic twist, because you knew there had to be an ironic twist.

As we have settled into our little suburban home, the kind of home where you run into the neighbors at the grocery store, which we just did, the kind of suburban home where a stroll down the street with wet hair gets you questions about how the water was today and the waves, the retro home in the retro-feeling town where kids lean their bikes up next to the ice cream shop without locking them, as we settle into that home, M. has embraced Americana and home owning like nobody’s business. This weekend, this episode, that means he came home with a stereo turntable.

Now, it ain’t your grandpa’s hifi. Nope, it’s USB and comes with software to record your vinyl to your computer’s hard drive.

But, M., he envisions something a bit more akin to his lying in a distant bedroom in the 1970s listening to the crackle of vinyl rock and roll and imagining a life in the U.S. of A. He wants a record-player set up in our British Empire inspired dark wood and breezy curtains plantation meets Pier 1 Imports living room. He wants to hear Deep Purple all over again like the first time.

Where my first vinyl collection came about from that being the only thing there was, this one will be more kitschy. M., no doubt, will be piling up the classics from the British and American stars from way back when. I think Frampton will be coming alive fairly soon in our living room. Me, I have to think about it. Do I need to by Cheap Thrills on vinyl again, or should I start hunting for 78s and one-off recordings with dust and questionable worth?

Technorati Tags: 1970s, 1980s, America, beach, records, vinyl, music, youth