The future is the past

Perched a mile high, it would be impossible to miss this humongous structure if you’re travelling to and from the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) throughout the month of January.

Atop the Forum in Inglewood — the former home of the Lakers and the Kings — the circular structure is a sight to behold: the world’s largest vinyl record of the Eagles’ 16-time platinum 1977 hit Hotel California spinning at roughly 17 miles an hour.

This brilliant marketing coup was done to promote the Eagles’ upcoming concert on Jan. 15, 17, 18, 22, 24 and 25. The concerts will jumpstart the re-opening of the 17,500-seat Forum, which underwent renovation last year following its sale to the Madison Square Garden Company in 2012.

Built in just 10 days by Pop2Life, a Glendale-based promotion company, the structure is the world’s only 120-foot aluminum truss circle consisting of 250,000 square feet of printed vinyl, weighing over 50,000 pounds — about 25 tons — of materials, its graphics as visible as the iconic Hollywood sign.

What a perfect way to herald the re-emergence of the Forum and the continued success and undeniable popularity of one of the world’s best-known groups — the Eagles! The Eagles are still making the rounds of concert halls today.

The vinyl record atop the Forum covers an astounding 5.7 acres, 407 feet in diameter built by 75 people over at Christmastime. Sadly it will not play any music.

But beyond the marketing spin of the gigantic recreation of the venerable vinyl, the feat is an affirmation that vinyl has returned to the mainstream. I can’t help but feel triumphant. The resistance has won!  Vinyl had been consigned to oblivion when compact discs started to replace it as the premium music format in the 1980s. But a few renegade bands of audiophiles refused to embrace the digital medium. They found the new format so wanting. It was clean but had no soul. Vinyl on the other hand exuded presence, warmth and excellent sound reproduction. Thus began the analog renaissance!

In my informal chat with Stereophile Magazine reviewer Michael Fremer at last November’s Hi-Fi Show, he confidently predicted that vinyl is here to stay: “Digital music recreation has reached a dead-end. It just couldn’t sound as good as vinyl no matter how hard engineers try to increase music resolution. They’re still trying, but they have been overcome by the analog renaissance and it’s just a matter of time when they will finally surrender. Vinyl is the past and it’s the future.”

True enough, in this day and age of digital revolution, Amazon reports that sales of vinyl records are up 745 percent since 2008.

Amazon believes that one of its product features is responsible: Amazon AutoRip is a feature that gives customers free MP3 versions of select vinyl and CDs purchased through the e-commerce giant.

Amazon says that AutoRip-enabled vinyl records sell at a 62 percent higher volume than non-AutoRip albums, pushing vinyl unit sales up 66 percent year-over-year since the company launched AutoRip in early 2013.

I seriously doubt such chest-thumping pronouncement. Long before Amazon, audiophiles had already developed disdain for digital music, arguing that an LP’s grooves yielded warmth and profundity that the CD’s digital code could not equal.

Credit is due to the resiliency of the early resistance — provided largely by an audience with “golden ears,” many of whom were born after CDs were launched in the 1980s.

Today, major labels and independent ones are pressing vinyl. Many, if not all, of their new releases have a vinyl version, giving birth to new pressing plants. A growing number of classic albums — the complete catalogs of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones in their early years, and Bob Dylan — have had vinyl reissues in recent years.

Pressing plants are starting to mushroom in the US. In addition to the few which have survived from the vinyl era and have been spruced up, several new plants have been built. Business in these pressing plants is brisk, and almost all are working to full capacity.

And for the first time since the iTunes Store was launched in 2003, Billboard says that sales of digital tracks and albums experienced a decline last year with sales of CDs taking a deep dive.

Analog rules!

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For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.com or at vphl@hotmail.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.