The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
b-side
Thursday, March 8, 2018 — 3B

You’re a teenager and it’s your 
first day back at school after a 
wonderful summer vacation. 
The air is still warm and your 
excitement about the coming 
year dominates any malevolent 
feelings you may have toward 
the early mornings and the 
monotonous schedule of lower 

education. In the fire drill line, 
you notice Vinny from math 
class last year.
But this isn’t the same Vinny.
He 
looks 
different, 
handsomer. 
Maybe 
it’s 
the 
summer tan — who knows. 
Either way, Vinny is the new talk 
of the town, and you give your 
best 007 impression to sneakily 
slide up a few spots in line to ask 
him about his summer.
In 
elementary 
school, 
everyone 
wanted 
Vinny; 
however, 
once 
the 
middle 
school years hit, Cam was the 
prize and poor Vinny’s stock 
took a tumble. But with this 
new Vinny — this rugged, 
mysterious Vinny who wears 
flannels and has a five o’clock 
shadow — people begin to lose 
interest in clean-cut Cam and 
his hard-parted undercut and 
American Eagle graphic tees. 
Vinny is back on top. He has a 
warm, honest persona that fake 
Cam simply can’t pull off, and 
he’s just offbeat enough to be 
cool. 
Vinny’s return to glory can 
be equated to the phoenix-like 
rise of another v-word (how 
convenient): vinyl. Since 2009, 
the vintage music format has 
experienced 
a 
260 
percent 
growth in sales. The scene 
inside any Urban Outfitters 
store has enough evidence of the 

phenomenon: walls lined with 
both modern and classic vinyl, 
from Led Zeppelin to Kendrick 
Lamar, with record players on 
sale to match. But what’s behind 
the 
spontaneous 
resurgence 
of vinyl in recent years? The 
answer to this question is a little 
more complex than the acne 
cream and good ol’ maturation 
of Vinny’s case.
To provide some insight, The 
Daily enlisted co-owner of Ann 
Arbor’s Encore Records, Jim 
Dwyer. According to Dwyer, 
the driving force behind vinyl’s 
rebirth is sound quality. When 
CDs were introduced, they were 
marketed as a cleaner-sounding 
alternative 
to 
vinyl 
that 
wasn’t prone to the warping 
or scratching which plagued 
records. As audiophiles began 
to have their way with the 
digital format, however, they 
noticed this marketed “clean” 
sound was cold and compressed 
in reality. Dwyer explained 
the vinyl sound is simply more 
palatable. 
“When you have a room with 
microphones and a band, the air 
is vibrating and it goes into the 
microphone. When the process 
is reversed, you put a needle on 
the record and the vibrations 
the 
microphone 
picked 
up 
are now coming out of your 
speaker,” he said. 
Conversely, with a CD, a 
recording is digitized into a 
string of zeros and ones that is 
etched into a disc as a series of 
bumps and non-bumps. A CD 
player shoots laser light at the 
disc to reveal these etchings and 
play their respective sounds. 
This electronic process results 
in a smooth and samely sound 
that lacks the warmth and 
authenticity of a mechanically 
engineered and played record, 
and people have begun to notice.
Dwyer also pointed toward 
the cyclical nature of culture, 
i.e., “everything old is new 
again,” 
to 
explain 
vinyl’s 
comeback. We all know this 
generational trend; vintage has 
an appeal — just ask any hipster. 
Today, it’s simply cool to have 
and play a record. What’s 
more, records aren’t “old” for 
millennials; vinyl is a novelty to 
young adults, as they grew up in 
a digital age dominated by CDs, 
iTunes and streaming services.
Additionally, vinyl provides 
a listening experience that has 
been lacking in the digital age. 
To start, a listener can actually 
see and interact with the cover 
art, an aspect of albums that has 
become virtually obsolete due 
to thumbnail images of album 
covers and technology’s size 
limitations. Playing records also 
ensures the listener experiences 
the tracks of an album in their 
intended sequence, as opposed 
to blasphemously shuffling or 
adding singles to a playlist.
As it pertains to Ann Arbor, 
Dwyer 
mentioned 
vinyl’s 
resurgence has not been as 
dramatic because records never 
really died out in the first place. 
A hip college town, Ann Arbor 
has always hosted students 
and 
non-students 
eager 
to 
experience the listening culture 
of yesteryear. With that said, 
there was a brief period in the 
’90s when Encore experienced 
dwindling demand for records 
and converted much of its 

inventory to CDs. The digital 
disease ran rampant, and even 
the mightiest of record stores 
stumbled. But thanks to vinyl’s 
renewed 
appeal, 
Encore 
is 
thriving once again.
“Customers come in from 
outside the area and say, ‘Oh 
boy, there’s nothing like this 
where we live,’ and they’re 
always shocked when I tell 
them that Ann Arbor actually 
has four record stores. So, we’re 

lucky,” Dwyer said. 
 Conveniently paired with 
vinyl’s revival is the influx of 
records into the vinyl vortex 
due to the inevitable aging of 
Baby Boomers, the original 
record collectors. Dwyer ended 
our conversation on this point, 
analogizing the vinyl experience 
to casual fishing, during which 
one catches a fish, basks in the 
triumph and returns the fish 
to the water to be caught by 
another 
triumphant 
person 
in the future. Like fishermen, 
he explained, vinyl collectors 
never really own their records; 
they borrow them, experience 
them and return them to the 
listening community, either at 
the end of the week or at the end 
of their lives.
“I’ve begun to realize that, at 
the end of the day, nobody gets 
to keep their records. You’re the 
caretaker of those records, and 
then when your turn to let it go 
comes, somebody else becomes 
the caretaker of that record,” he 
said. 
Fundamentally, 
it 
is 
this 
personalized, rich, cherishable 
experience that has brought 
listeners back to vinyl after far 
too many years of digitized, 
purified, 
impersonal 
sound 
— just like your revamped 
attraction to Vinny from math 
class.

Vinyl is back, but why?

MIKE WATKINS
Daily Arts Writer

SINGLE REVIEW: ‘‘TIL IT’S OVER’

 No one does summer 
romance better than Ander-
son .Paak. His expertly 
crafted mix of hip hop, funk 
and neo-soul sounds best 
when paired with a bottle 
of champagne sometime in 
mid-July; the multi-instru-
mental pop and fizzle of 
albums Malibu and Venice 
speak to long stretches of 
golden beaches and all the 
heated passion that comes 
with warm weather flings. 
It’s music that quite literal-
ly bursts with charisma — a 
breezy personability that is 
mirrored by .Paak himself, 
if his Tiny Desk perfor-
mance is anything to go by 
— and the reason why we 
all were eagerly anticipat-
ing the release of new music 
after 2016’s Yes Lawd!

 It’s 2018, a new single has 
finally been released and it 
does not disappoint. 
 Released as part of a 

Spike Jonze-directed Apple 
ad, “’Til It’s Over” takes 
all the sunny, shimmer-
ing vibrancy that .Paak 
is known for and adds a 
hypnotic twist. The song 
finds .Paak stretching to 
savor the last few moments 
of a relationship. The end 
is in sight, yet .Paak holds 
no regret, softly singing, 
“Only one more night in Los 

Angeles / I really thought 
I could handle it,” over an 
R&B groove that is remi-
niscent of older songs “The 
City” and “Room in Here.” 
The beat rises until .Paak 
utters the words, “Imma 
ride it ’til it’s over,” and 
then all noises cease. The 
only thing that is left to 
echo around in the cavity 
left behind is an ambient 
synth progression, growing 
and building on itself until 
the song seems to take a 
life of its own — organically 
shifting from one verse to 
the next. “’Til It’s Over” is a 
psychedelic daydream that 
you can’t help but be pulled 
into. 

- Shima Sadaghiyani, 
Daily Music Editor

APPLE MUSIC

DOMINIC POLSINELLI / DAILY 

SECONDARY

“Til It’s Over”

Anderson .Paak

Apple Music 

While shamelessly analyzing 
the outfit of someone across 
the room or on the streets, how 
is it that so much emphasis 
falls on the aspect of an outfit 
that is viewed last? Forget the 
shirt, jeans or jacket that blend 
with this accessory — or maybe 
they don’t even blend. Often 
times, outfits are centered 
around 
just 
one 
aspect: 
sneakers. Yes, that’s right: 
those Nikes, Adidas, Vans, 
Pumas, Reeboks, Converse or 
any other brand that you feel 
are almost a part of you. This is 
the aspect of fashion that more 
than anything seems to take 
the spotlight of streetstyle and 
beyond.
In fact, it is this idea that 
seems to drive the world 
that is sneaker culture. The 
integration 
of 
seemingly 
effortless athletic looks into 
everyday settings is one that 
truly is revolutionizing the 
fashion game. However, it is 
this emphasis on effortless, 
thrown together “athlesiure” 
that saturates the premise of 
sneaker culture with irony. In 
all honesty, keeping up with 
sneaker culture is really not 
effortless at all. It’s a ton of 
work.
Perhaps it’s the apparent 
brand orientation that innately 
comes with shoes or the way 
sneakers 
have 
transcended 
culture beyond just gym floors, 

but the focus on having the 
latest and greatest is at the base 
of sneaker culture. Historically 
used 
for 
more 
pragmatic 
purposes, 
sneakers 
started 
as just another shoe worn for 
athletics. Take Converse high 

tops, for example. The iconic 
red, white and blue, identifiable 
from anywhere, were once 
worn by basketball players in 
gyms across the United States. 
Stan Smiths too were inspired 
by the need for a pragmatic 
shoe on tennis courts. With an 
emphasis on simply fulfilling a 
task, sneakers have not always 
been the spectacle we view 
them as today.
As society has become a 
world of consumers, a world 
centered around media and 
material, sneakers made their 
way out of the gym, onto the 
streets and into the aesthetics 
of 
everyday 
life. 
With 
a 
twisted form of pragmatics in 
mind, sneaker culture serves 

as blatantly ignored source 
of 
complete 
consumerism. 
While it is often common that 
sneaker fans are loyal to one 
style or brand — those old Air 
Force 1s or checkerboard Vans 
— a huge pressure to have the 
latest version, the next best 
thing, is ever present. Even 
though each of us claim we 
have an old, beat up pair of 
sneakers we are loyal to, we 
still desire the next model, 
the next trend, whether it be 
within or beyond the designs 
of our favorite brands. These 
companies know sneaker fans 
will fall victim to this. How is 
it that one could feel the need 
to own Air Force 1s in high top 
and low top, or the same Pumas 
in a platform and regular sole? 
This is sneaker culture. It’s in 
the details. It’s in the constant 
changing of designs that we 
will never, no matter how hard 
we try, be able to keep up with.
So yes, stay loyal to those 
Adidas or Nikes that have 
quite literally been with you 
through it all. There’s just no 
denying that new styles and 
collaborations put out by these 
brands 
won’t 
be 
tempting 
or eat away at your inner 
“sneakerhead” as you convince 
yourself the latest Nikes are 
an absolute necessity to your 
shoe closet. Sneaker culture is 
built on this craving, this need 
for the new styles and new 
options. And scarily enough, 
without complaint, consumers 
do not appear to be running out 
of options anytime soon.

The never ending cycle 
of today’s sneaker culture 

MARGARET SHERIDAN
Daily Arts Writer

FLICKR

Sneaker culture 

is built on this 

craving, this need 

for the new styles 

and new options

Dwyer also 

pointed toward 

the cyclical nature 

of culture, i.e., 

“everything old 

is new again,” to 

explain vinyl’s 

comeback. We 

all know this 

generational 

trend; vintage has 

an appeal — just 

ask any hipster. 

Today, it’s simply 

cool to have and 

play a record

“I’ve begun 

to realize that, at 

the end of 

the day, nobody 

gets to keep 

their records. 

You’re the 

caretaker of those 

records, 

and then when 

your turn to 

let it go comes, 

somebody else 

becomes the 

caretaker of that 

record”

Vinyl is making a comeback in today’s art culture, so The 
Daily investigated this phenomena at Encore Records

STYLE NOTEBOOK

