Did I mention I’m into vinyl? No, not wearing it. Playing it.

Since I bought a new record player during lockdown, I have been enjoying all my old LPs and buying new ones, haunting places such as Rocking Horse Records in Brisbane’s CBD and Dutch Vinyl at Paddington. There are many other record shops in Brisbane now and vinyl is booming worldwide, which is great.

There was a time when it was predicted that vinyl was finished. The same people who predicted that also predicted that books were redundant. But the popularity of record stores and bookshops now proves that to be rubbish. In fact, I read an article the other day reporting that sales of vinyl records are at their highest this century.

In my own small way, I have helped that happen.

I have a lot of CDs too which I enjoy and I buy albums on iTunes to play in the car but I’m not into streaming at all.

I prefer my music more curated and organized. Also, I enjoy reading the liner notes on LPs, the lengthier the better. I am, among other things, a Dub Reggae fan and I’m now collecting LPs mainly from the 1970s and they come with fascinating blurbs about the artists, people such as Augustus Pablo, Scientist, Lee Perry and King Tubby. Don’t know them?

Well, do yourself a favour I say.

There’s something comforting about the ritual of playing vinyl records and it takes me back to my childhood.

I spent my boyhood in Hong Kong which was pop music mad in the late 1960s and I haunted a small record store in Mody Road just near the Holiday Inn Golden Mile on Nathan Road. This is downtown Kowloon for those of you who know Hong Kong.

I was a Beatles tragic and would make pilgrimages there every time a new record of theirs came out. I can remember the day I arrived to see Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band displayed around the walls. It has been dubbed the greatest record ever made. I agree and I still have my original copy, purchased in 1967.

That album is a tactile experience and the cover art is unforgettable and it cannot be done justice in any other format.

It’s not just old fogeys like me who think so because I know lots of young music fans are also increasingly into vinyl. Go into your local record store any day of the week and you’ll find people flipping through the LPs the way I used to when I was a lad. And of course, I still do.

And a good record lasts. I have one of my parents’ old records, a 1963 studio album by Nat King Cole entitled Where Did Everyone Go? It’s on Capitol Records and it still plays beautifully. I urge everyone to get into vinyl again. Playing that is. Although if you want to wear it, that’s okay too.