I remember vinyl records

HoustonChronicle.com - Record factory closes as vinyl spins slower: "April 16, 2005, 6:30PM
Record factory closes as vinyl spins slower
As workers await their final shift, much of the talk is turning from nostalgia to anger
By HART SEELY
Syracuse Post-standard

GLOVERSVILLE, N.Y. - She started the job on a Friday, 49 years ago. She found herself pressing the music of Bill Haley and the Comets into a 78 rpm record, and she knew her world would never be the same.

'I remember my mother-in-law telling me, 'Never start anything on a Friday,' ' Verone Hulbert recalled. ''If you start something on a Friday, it never ends.' '

But the end is near for Universal Music Group's record-pressing plant in Gloversville.

Early next month, the plant will close, 112 union workers will lose their jobs, and another icon of the 20th century — the vinyl record — will edge one track closer to extinction."

I still have a big box of my old vinyl 45 rpm records. The Big Bopper on "D" records from Beaumont, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters doing "Sexy Ways," Dion and the Belmonts singing "I Wonder Why." And so on. I know they're not good for anything, and I never play them anymore, but I can't quite bring myself to get rid of them. There was something about those records that was magical to me. A CD just isn't the same. (Probably a sure sign that I'm a confirmed Old Fart.)