Vinyl is for music lovers. That’s always been true, and it’s where this project starts.

I have no formal musical education and wouldn’t call myself a musician. I’m a music lover, and I love music most in its best physical form. Records came into my life through my parents. They kept a collection in the house, along with a record player and stereo that worked, and as a young child I would pull the records out and wonder what these objects were for. Eventually I started playing them, and I kept playing them through my childhood and into my teens.

Two records changed everything: Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Led Zeppelin’s fourth album. They rewired my developing brain in the best way. I had no idea music could be that powerful or that expansive. The feeling of hearing Wish You Were Here for the first time on my dad’s turntable has never left me, and it’s the feeling I still chase every time I go looking for something new.

That feeling finds me maybe once or twice a year, and when it does, I give myself over to it completely. If it’s a new artist, I buy a record or go see them play. If it’s an older one, I dig into everything: the history, the recording sessions, the discography, the live shows. Sometimes I’ll pick up the guitar and try to learn one of their songs. It’s a lifelong obsession, and a happy one. Music has been the connective tissue of my life, running through my own happiness and through the best relationships and friendships I’ve had.

Twenty years of collecting later, I have more than a thousand records spanning the mid-1950s to the present. This project is my attempt to go through them chronologically and completely, and to understand each one. For every record, I want to look at the history behind it: who made it, when, and why it mattered. I want to listen closely to the music itself, to what it’s doing, what it means, and where it fits in the larger story of recorded sound. And I want to tell my own story alongside it: how I found it, what it means to me, and what it has taught me about listening.

I’m 36, living a normal life, and looking for the things that bring a little happiness and escape. Music does that. It enhances reality the way seasoning brings out a dish. It decorates time. It’s the old favorite or the new discovery playing as I look out the windshield, giving me exactly what I need. It’s been there when I was at my lowest and when I was pushing hardest in my career. It’s always there.

I want every record I own to have a reason for being with me, and I don’t want to forget what that reason is. Part of this project is finding that feeling again. Part of it is remembering.

Thanks for reading,
RTR