This morning, my favorite indie record store The Last Record Store (appropriately named since they literally are the last record store in Santa Rosa) posted this question on their Twitter feed: “What’s more likely to be around in 25 years: iPods or records?” On Facebook, one person made the valid point that this is actually an unfair comparison, since the iPod is actually a technological gadget, more akin to a record player than a long-playing record; Nonetheless, the question got me thinking about not really what will be around in 25 years (I think they will both be around, though the iPod will be a much altered beast from what we have now) but rather, which medium conjures a more vital, aesthetic experience. I know it’s not a shocking conclusion, but I have to go with records still being as important in twenty-five years. I love my MP3 player for its amazing ability to allow me to access tons of music at the flick of a finger. I can’t believe I survived the nineties without one. But a recent dive back into my record collection, the result of a day-long effort to establish a central record listening area in the living room, has got me remembering the radness of the record album.

It all started when I bought a $30 used turntable off a friend of mine, who had found it at a garage sale. My husband and I then spent a rainy Sunday setting up the turntable in the living room, right where a television might have gone in earlier iterations of my life. It was an exciting day. I alphabetized my CD collection, listened to everything from John Fahey to Helium to Blackalicious. And then, last week, my husband came home on his lunch break, face beaming, his arms filled with a stack of worn vinyl records. He works at the Center for the Blind, and an elderly woman, one of his regular clients, has a son who is a blues musician. The son has taken to handing over favorite records whenever my husband comes by for a session with his mother. Last time, it was a CD by Bahamian singer and guitarist Joseph Spence—a man who invented his own guitar style and sings and hums along with the music like a long lost member of the Muppets Band. Before that, it was a stack of classic rock records, including something by Sandy Bull.

“Why did he just give these to us?” I asked immediately, suspicious that we had ended up with someone’s trash pile—a stack resembling the potentially promising ones piled at the back of thrift stores that almost always end up containing the multiple copies of Barry Manilow and Laurence Welk and not much more.

“He’s just one of those people that likes to give his stuff away. He likes to share things and doesn’t place value on owning them,” my husband said. I felt lame for even questioning the guy’s intentions.

We descended on the records like kids in a candy store, pulling out jazz records by Eric Dolphy, Art Ensemble of Chicago and Billie Holiday. And Bob Marley—lots of Marley—including “Catch a Fire” which is held nestled within a record cover that resembles a silver Bic lighter. You can actually lift off the top off the cover, as though you are lighting a…well, you know what they used those lighters for.

We spent Saturday night listening to Billie Holiday, talking about her life and what we had learned from reading the extensive liner notes. My husband hadn’t heard much Billie Holiday, and it was cool to see his reaction to that honeyed, broken voice—and I kept flashing back to a time in my life when her songs where the only thing that held me together. We talked about how Lady Day had been born to Sadie Fagan—only fourteen when she gave birth—and how her father had been a musician who took off early to play in Fletcher Henderson’s band. We listened to “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” and smiled when she sang about jumping in the ocean, and cringed when she sang about getting hit by her man. I held the record cover, pouring over the stories, the quotes from Holiday herself, smelling that musty vinyl and really inhabiting the music for a hour or so. I don’t do that with my MP3’s; I don’t know if I ever will. And that is why I know for sure that in twenty-five years, it will still be about the full-on experience of the record, and that this is the one constant I can depend on when it comes to music in my life.

Photo by Flickr user Shane Gavin