Hey. My name is Jeff, and I’m a guy with a turntable and a passport who loves music and physical media.
I used to blog about the music that crossed my path, and the first iteration of Life in the Vinyl lane was around for about 10 years, though over the years I posted less and less. Was it a case of COVID malaise? I don’t think so – I just sort of ran out of things to say and felt like I was posting the same ideas over and over again. So when a problem with my web host reared its head and I wasn’t able to fully resolve it, the timing seemed right to take the blog off life support. I downloaded all my posts into a PDF and discontinued my hosting, which not only shut down Life in the Vinyl Lane but also the Seattle hockey website I operated in one form or another since the late 1990s (remember the Geocities days?).
To be honest, it was kind of liberating. At my peak I was writing about 300 posts per year. Most were about 300-500 words, but there were longer ramblings too. My goal was to write a post about every single record, as well as some of the CDs and cassettes, I bought. Sometimes I’d pick up things in record stores just because they looked interesting, albums Mrs. Life in the Vinyl Lane and I came to refer to as “blog fodder”. And for the most part I enjoyed everything I bought – the handful of records I didn’t write about were those I actively disliked. I know that snark and cracking wise is good for clicks, but having experienced my own work panned in print I didn’t want to be a part of that negativity cycle. I don’t need to insult your art just because I don’t like it.
As the summer of 2023 progressed albums continued to enter the Life in the Vinyl Lane household, and occasionally I’d find myself thinking, “man, I’d like to write about this and share it”. I posted a bit on Instagram (@lifeinthevinyllane), but it’s not a great format for writing anything longer than a few sentences. So… I began toying with the idea of resurrecting Life in the Vinyl Lane.
I struggled with understanding why I wanted to blog again. I never made any money from it, and frankly I’m not interested in monetizing a new blog either. The question I kept coming back to was, am I doing this because I want to tell people about things they might find interesting, or was it simply an outlet to put my thoughts into the world? Or worse yet, was it just some kind of unconscious bragging, like hey, look at all the cool stuff I have?
The internet, and social media in particular, make people feel like it’s important that others know what they think. Back in the day we all just accepted that most of us didn’t have a voice, or if we did it didn’t extend very far. But now if you make an interesting Tik Tok video you might reach a million people across the world in a day. So is my desire to write and blog simply a way of shouting into the wind of the internet, seeking some kind of validation that I’ve been heard? I don’t know. There’s probably an element of that. But there’s also… the music.
And not just the music. But also the musicians. And the record store owners. And the folks running little indie labels. All these people who put their energy into creating and sharing art. Over the last decade I bought records across the US and in least a dozen countries. In many of those places we met cool people, people who were passionate about their local scenes and pointed us towards new and interesting artists. People who at times even became true friends, who we’ve broken bread with, who have stayed in our home. I’ve tracked down musicians on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to ask them about that one four-song rock EP they put out in 1984, and usually they were quite happy to have someone ask about it all these years later. I’ve even been lucky enough to interview a few contemporary musicians I admire and respect. Life in the Vinyl Lane was the door through which these connections were made.
The blog also provided an unintended personal benefit – I had my own notes on almost every single album on my shelves. A lot of these records (probably most, if I’m being honest) only got spun once, so having a couple of paragraphs with my thoughts on them can be useful at times. I remember buying used records that had hand-written note cards in them and I would think, “who is the crazy guy (it almost has to be a guy, right?) who took the time to write these notecards?” Then I realized that crazy guy was me, only that I was doing it digitally.
How can I not want to write about these experiences, to shed a little light on a long-forgotten artist, or a new up-and-comer? After all, other music blogs have turned me onto things and provided recommendations about the best shops to visit when we travel. If I can contribute to that community in some way, then even if I do have a bit of a selfish motive, perhaps I can cut myself just a little slack.
And with that, Life in the Vinyl Lane is back. I don’t expect to ever approach the volume of posting I did during the heyday of the original, but that should only help to keep me more engaged. I’ll do some longer pieces and I’ll probably re-publish some of my earlier posts, especially those with artist interviews. Music and artists from Iceland will continue to be featured prominently, if for no other reason that we still make Iceland Airwaves part of our annual vacation calendar.
Hopefully you enjoy some of it. Feel free to let me know what you think.