My first forays into the what felt like the adult world of rpm pleasures reflected a chaotic, pre-adolescent smorgasbord of taste. The genealogy of my vinyl collection maps out a forging and reformulating of identity and belonging. Accrued on the basis of ill-spent pocket money and gifts from extended family whose toe-hold in popular culture extended as far as this week’s No.1, I curated a paving-stones assortment of everything from Showaddywaddy and Chuck Berry to (and for this crime against culture, I sincerely apologise) St Winifred’s School Choir.

As my palate finessed (and thAs my palate finessed (and the likes of St Winifred’s were consigned to a past of plausible deniability), I gravitated to Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Squeeze, and (much to my Mum’s horror as I belted out Holidays in the Sun in the kitchen), the Sex Pistols. By the time I was 15, the Jam were my gateway drug to soul music, a Rubicon-crossing epiphany later to kick wide the doors of perception to 70s funk and hip hop. The NME became my journal of record every Wednesday. It’s been a heady, formative ride.

By the mid-19th century, Karl Marx was describing the displacement of use value (where objects are recognized for their intrinsic qualities) with exchange value (the market price attached to consumer goods). Commodity fetishism was underway, with shopping substituting for lived experience and human connectivity. By the 1960s, Theodor Adorno was despairing of capitalism’s neat ability to sell us things we don’t need. In a doom loop of unrequited need, we flocked to the high streets looking for that hit of affection, love, affirmation or belonging. We invested unearned merits in the shiny goods that drew us like moths to a flame. Now, predatory algorithms stalk our every online interaction. We are all ‘cloud serfs’ providing intimate details of our inner lives free to online feudal lords with designs not only on our bank cards, but our heads as well.

But, sometimes, even hardened rebels stumble across items which, almost by accident, have the power to reach inside and awaken something unspoiled, and real.

The light heft of a 7” single felt like a perfectly honed, bespoke piece of art. It came gift-wrapped in specially commissioned sleeves. On occasion, a free postcard or lyric sheet would reveal themselves. The illicit thrill of uncovering a hidden gem in a dusty crate in Disco 2000 or Trash Records in Ayr felt like small victories over the fates. Once home, my mates and I would wait for that visceral crackle of needle on vinyl before the first bars announced themselves. I am music! I am message! Get your air guitars out! Raise your voices and challenge the gods! The run off was a bookend of static, necessitating a return to the record player to flip to the B-side and a chance to hear a different aspect to the artist’s established style, or a companion piece to the A-side’s headline statement. As the lyrics bedded in and the chorus became a well-worn chant of insider knowledge, we would check the run off for a pressing plant worker’s signature, wondering what lucky, mysterious person had landed the great fortune of committing sounds to vinyl for a living.

Perhaps I’m an ageing Canute railing against the tides. Maybe listening to music while walking home, sitting on the tram or washing the dishes is equally as immersive an experience as once animated our teenage bedrooms and clubs. But I wonder. Like so much modern culture, headphones feel almost calculated to isolate us in atomized spaces and privatised crevices. Music is curated on our behalf by algorithms. Our tastes, and the opportunities to explore different and surprising avenues suggested by crate-digging, friends or chance, have been replaced by a feedback loop of surveillance capitalism. Mixed tapes aren’t lovingly gathered by a suitor, mate or big sister anymore. Instead, impersonal systems steer us away from unfamiliar tributaries towards narrower, well-trodden playlists ordained by algorithms finessed to ensure commodified and linear tastes and interests.

The neo-liberal project had at its core a different version of human existence. For the Pinochets, Reaganites and Thatcherites, there was ‘no such thing as society.’ Our gilded silos were prepared for us. As Pete Shelley once sang, ‘I guess it’s just the music that brings on nostalgia for an age yet to come.’ What have we lost when the melody exists in the cold, depopulated air of cyber space, rather than cramped bedrooms or a small venue’s cauldron of shared excitement and memory? The stories we weave around our favourite 7” purchase, the inside cover of a precious LP (with bonus track!) or the free badge you sent away for from a dodgy new wave gang of heroically scowling yobs are absent from the steralised spaces of online platforms.

Technology’s streamlined access to every nook and cranny of pop’s long, deep seams has given us an impressive overview of the history of popular sound. Re-released vintage viny is now easily procured, ghost culture trinkets of a monetised heritage. They still look, feel and sound fab gear, though. And while charity shops don’t price their stock nearly as generously as they used to, the odd gem can still be uncovered amongst the Russian marching bands and Brotherhood of Man albums. I’m conscious of the environmental debt. PVC is, after all, derived from fossil fuels. You might want to seek out bio-attributed versions. But as we know, the climate crisis demands system change, not an adjustment of shopping patterns.

Elvis Shakespeare may or may not be preparing to leave the building. But Vinyl Villains, Lounge 33 and Good Vibes remain. Based on no evidence whatsoever, I predict a new wave of vinyl get-togethers across the country. As the Showstoppers sang, Ain’t Nothing but a HouseParty. And nothing quite compares to the stone-cool grooves of a 3-minute belter of a riff coming at you at industrial volume from the layered furrows of a lime green collector’s edition.