A classic doesn't die, it just bides its time until some subculture reaches out and resuscitates it.
So it is with vinyl records. Although the music industry treats the grooved, black discs like a poor cousin, the underground has kept vinyl record sales alive with collectors ranging from Asian tourists who snatch up 1950s and '60s easy listening kitsch to baby boomers and Gen X'ers unwilling to let go of their fond needle-on-the-record memories.
"Being in Las Vegas we get record collectors from all over the world. It's part of their past, the record links you to that," Joe Malumphy, sales clerk at a Record City store on East Sahara Avenue, says.
"What you could get on record, you can't get on CD -- some (recordings) aren't even on record anymore," Malumphy jokes of the availability of past performers' projects.
Some acts whose work can be found only on records didn't hit the Top 10 on the record charts. Instead they clung to the mid- to bottom range of the Top 50 before tumbling swiftly out of sight and out of mind.
Acts such as: Mott the Hoople, an early 1970s glam-rock band backed by such legends as David Bowie, which had the 1973 hit "All the Young Dudes"; Timbuk 3, which had the 1986 hit "The Future is So Bright, I've Got to Wear Shades"; and Tommy TuTone, whose hit "867-5309/Jenny" briefly graced the charts in the early '80s.
The clientele of Record City's six locations -- there are more than a dozen stores in Las Vegas selling vinyl records -- ranges from twenty-somethings looking for new, rare releases to middle-aged listeners re-discovering albums of such past artists as Jackie Gleason and Martin Denny, which many times are the only copies of that particular recording left.
An original Martin Denny -- a '50s and '60s Polynesian-style band leader -- can run upwards of hundreds of dollars because of the sexy photos depicting exotic woman on each thick cardboard cover.
"The cover is everything to (the Asian market)," Malumphy says. They'll pay anything, he says, just because, surprise, "it's the same woman" on each album cover.
Mike Villano, managing editor of the compact disc review magazine ICE, says vinyl is hard to shake: "Especially as we get older, it's hard to read these (small) CD covers," he quips.
"People say CDs are better but there's still a (market) of audiophile collectors out there and there are still companies out there that put out quality vinyl," Villano says.
From the campy Pia Zadora and Olivia Newton-John attempts at rock-'n'-roll to the more serious collaboration of Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra sessions from 1940 to 1942, there's gold in them thar' stacks o' recordings to collectors who find what's outdated an "in" thing.
At most record stores in town, stacks of records pile high from the floor to the tops of tables, which hold countless other titles such as: "Mood Music for Dining," with a tranquil scene on the faded cover of two empty lawn chairs next to a rippling pond; "Dance Party," with a young couple's well-heeled shoes tapping to cartoon notes swimming around their ankles; Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence frozen in their prime, smiling up from the covers of albums rubbed glossy from use.
Then there's a late '60s Barbra Striesand Christmas compilation with the original red sticker advertising the album at just $1 with the purchase of any Maxwell House product. The front has Striesand sitting snugly on a couch, red and green lights softly lit around her while on the back, the cut-out color heads of Doris Day, Jim Nabors and Andre Kastelanetz float on a gold background.
And finally, the smaller 45s pile of small 7-inch discs remains robust, with most sold to jukebox owners.
Of course, playing vinyl recordings still requires a turntable, but they are becoming harder to find and as they become the dinosaur of music technology. "Turntables are becoming obsolete," Mike Davis, mananger of the Rainbow Boulevard Best Buy megastore, says. "You have to find someone with a turntable."
But if a record collector has one, the rewards are still considerable. There are lots of "Wows!" and "Come look at this!" by customers finding that record that takes them down memory lane.
"You see a lot of Boston, Bee Gees, a lot of Billy Joel," says Robert Jones, sales clerk at another Record City on East Sahara. "Certain things that sold big (new), there's just a lot out there. We get a lot for trade."
So if it was trendy and expensive then, it's cheap and plentiful in the recyclable record industry.
Vinyl interest, Villano says, resurfaced in 1994 with the Seattle grunge band Pearl Jam, which often supported environmental and social issues. "They put out 'Vitalogy,' first in vinyl a few weeks before the CD release to build interest in the album and to get the hardcore fans out there to buy (it) ahead of time," Villano says. "In the interim years, few have done that. It's all very limited runs of this stuff."
Mike Zobrist and David Huffaker, both 23, opened the Sound Barrier music store on Maryland Parkway last March and were surprised at how quickly the new vinyl releases by contemporary bands sold.
"We just barely had any records in stock," Huffaker says. "Most people we sell records to didn't even have them growing up," Zobrist adds.
New bands are using colored vinyl and added tracks to tempt youngsters and hardcore fans to keep vinyl alive and also making it more of a collectible. So, why are vinyl records contributing to almost 50 percent of Sound Barrier's inventory sales?
"People perceive the record as more classic," Huffaker says, as Zobrist adds: "It's more of a collectors' item, more lasting."
But the limited number of vinyl releases doesn't put a dent in CD sales. Rather, artists enjoy the novelty of the medium, as do the fans. "Some artists are still attached to vinyl," Villano says. "They had it when they were younger and they don't want to let go of it all that much. They still like the bigger graphics and the whole touchy-feely thing that is part of an album."
In the stacks of thin, pressed recordings lie hidden artwork, messages, jokes and jibes at the controversies of the era.
In the stacks of Record City's used vinyl sits a typical well-loved album, the Rolling Stones' mid-'70s release, "Between the Buttons." This particular copy has a teenage girl's name, scrawled in timid handwriting, across the top. The back of the worn album shows nine cartoon panels in which Stones drummer Charlie Watts depicts the duality of the devotion -- love and hate -- by the band's fans at the time.
"It is more playful," Villano says. "You have a bigger playing field, a bigger canvas to draw on. There's just more you can do with albums."
Communication may be one reason contemporary artists are flipping back to vinyl and the larger format of records. "It's a way to give fans a nice collectible and every once in a while throw a bonus track on there," Villano says. "(But) it's really the artist wanting to do it more than the record companies."
And a lot of today's collectors say vinyl just sounds better, he says.
"A lot of people say CDs have a clinical, cold sound compared to the vinyl," Villano says. "I don't know, I grew up (listening to a) transistor radio in bed ... so it's not the sound quality as much as how good the music is. Sound quality will not make it better if it's crappy music."
Alex Vaughn, sales clerk and musicologist for Big B's, a used records and CDs store on South Maryland Parkway, says that vinyl is a music institution too important to its fans to vanish. "There's something so attractive about a record, the whole feel of the record," Vaughn says. "Some say that the CD (format) lacks warmth and clarity."
The way that some recordings are re-mastered also disturbs the way that the original recording was meant to be heard, dragging out the stereo sound to fit into a digital mode. "People are confusing clarity with the actual warmth of the recording," Vaughn says.
A new trend in record usage is by youngsters who probably didn't have records growing up is to spin the album on a turntable to create a specific sound. No music style is left out, ranging from "Sesame Street" lyrics by Big Bird to belly dancing music.
"Every record is like an instrument to them," Vaughn says. "They find that one sound and how to manipulate (the record)."
To each his own.
"It sounds real, authentic," Andy Damato, a 16-year-old collector from Corona, Calif., says. "It feels like you're actually in the studio."
At a Record City store, Damato flips through '80s punk records, some of which he has never heard and maybe never will because they aren't played on the radio or available on CD. But he, and his traveling companion, Tyler, exult over what they find.
"I like the whole art thing -- there's the art of the music and the art on the cover," Tyler -- who refers to himself as "just Tyler" -- says.
They are looking for older albums unavailable on CD and some new punk rock groups that are only produced on vinyl as sort of a backlash against technology.
In the early 1990s the music industry prophesied that records were never to grace the deep bins of music stores ever again and music stores revamped shelves to fit the roughly one quarter-size compact discs. But artists, music purists and used record store owners wouldn't let the medium die.
"It didn't take long after that to see limited issues come out," Villano says.
Jim Snyder, owner of Big B's, says his record sales are about one third of his inventory. He gets tourists in all the time and recently had a couple from Barcelona, Spain, plop down $200 on used records.
He mostly sells -- for 49 cents to a dollar -- the easy listening albums, which he says can be found in most thrift stores for about the same low cost. It's the new vinyl and kitsch '50s and '60s easy listening records that can go up to exorbitant prices.
But whatever the prices, the bottom line is this: A classic never dies.
"They never really went away," Villano says. "They just went underground for a while."
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