Skip, Pop, Repeat
Vinyl Scars
Auto Scars
Have you ever been in a hurry and done something careless? Yeah - I know. We’ve all been there and for me, it seems to be a recurring occurrence.
Pittsburgh had a run of snow and cold in January and February that turned every car wash attempt into a small comedy of errors. Lines too long. Closed for repairs. Out of service. When the weather finally broke I decided to just wash it myself. I backed the car out of the garage in a hurry.
CRACK! Clipped the passenger side mirror clean off.
Synchronicity
Have I mentioned that I collect vinyl? I started in 2017 when Danni gave me a 1959 Grundig Majestic stereo/turntable console for Christmas. She included a few Led Zeppelin albums to start my collection.
In 2021, I found a nice older pressing of Synchronicity by The Police. I was excited to give it a first spin. So excited that I was careless… As I went to place it on the turntable, I accidentally dropped it.
DOINK! It landed badly on the spindle.
Now a permanent pop reminds me of my carelessness every time I play it.
Same careless Matt back then as now but back then it prompted an idea for a song.
No wait… An album. Vinyl Scars.
Not All Scars Are Equal
Some people collect cars or records to own them in “mint condition”. That’s not me.
Vinyl and cars acquire “scars” the more they’re used. Scratches, scuffs, dings/dents and sometimes worse. Sometimes they’re caused by carelessness or neglect. Other times they just happen over time.
For vinyl, the scars that happen over a life time of spinning I consider the scars of a well-loved album.
Fingerprints, scuffs and scratches can be signs of such a well-loved record. Like my uncle’s copy of Dark Side of The Moon. When I listen to it, I know all the noise results from the many spins my uncle enjoyed.
I’ve also found other well-loved albums with signs beyond the vinyl scars. Newspaper and magazine clippings - or even rolling papers, seeds and stems stuffed in the album cover.
Examples of not-so-well-loved, abuse vinyl scars I’ve seen look like the previous owner played shuffleboard regularly with it.
Or for cars… You might see a side mirror missing or dangling by a wire.
The Song
Now that I have a concept, how do I come up with music and lyrics for this one? I described my approach in a prior article, but this was where I started experimenting with that process.
I hadn’t quite formulated my “folk-grunge” genre, but I loved playing the bassline from David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World”. So that was the starting point for the song structure and bass line. A traditional blues rock song with a walking bassline chorus. Oh, and throw in a few Nirvana-like guitar riffs because you know they did an iconic cover of Bowie’s song.
Brian Whitman collaborated with me on all the songwriting and he composed the guitars and some of the other instruments. For “Vinyl Scars” he composed and recorded the guitars and helped me figure out the transitions between the intro, verses, choruses and bridges.
I started writing the lyrics while the music was developing. Three verses, three types of damage: Pop, Skip, Repeat. Each verse starts with a type of vinyl scar and draws the parallel to relationships. The choruses also evolved:
Vinyl scars…
Don’t always happen right away
Vinyl Scars…
Can happen right away
Vinyl Scars…
They happen every day
I had an idea for how I wanted the song to end which I thought would also be a fun ending for the album. So the title track became the closing track on the album.
Vinyl Scars…
They never… ever go away.
The Album Cover
All my early album artwork came from Magda. I had just finished with Covers and was excited to see if she would be willing to work with me on album artwork for Vinyl Scars.
She was up for it and we started with the album cover and she produced five broken record concept sketches: an adult/child holding hands, an adult face, a clock, living vinyl, a world map.
I couldn’t choose just one. So we mashed a few together. What if it had a “Janus-like” face image? A child on one side, an adult on the other. And what if there was a clock face in the middle?
We iterated on a few sketches and Magda created an image of a shattering vinyl record on a gold background. The center of the record was a clock face based on a mantle clock built by my father. At 10:05, the hour hand sits just past the 10, landing near the 51-second mark on the dial. I was 51 when I made this album.
A child’s face was depicted on the “early” side of the of the clock and an adult face on the “late” side of the clock. Chips and fragments burst out of the record in the shape of the face depictions and some of the “Vinyl Scars” words.
They Happen Every Day
We start off fresh and new, and over our lives, our choices help define the smudges, scuffs, nicks, and scratches that mark our physical appearance and memories. Vinyl Scars explores the marks left behind in relationships and life. As the closing track, it sums up the album based on events that have positively and negatively impacted my life like friendship, betrayal, anger, forgiveness and love.
And broken car mirrors remind me to slow down and appreciate my Vinyl Scars.