The culture of listening to vinyl records is still present across all age groups, even though they are no longer cheap, especially when it comes to old and well-preserved editions, said Vukašin Graovac, a record collector from Belgrade.
Graovac, who works as a programmer, told reporters that collectors who gather, buy, sell, and resell records are actually preserving them from being forgotten.
“The culture of listening to vinyl records requires a stationary ritual. You turn on the record player, take out the record, play it, sit down, and listen to it from start to finish,” said Graovac, who gave a lecture on vinyl record culture this evening, organized at the Cultural Shelter in Doboj, which reopened after the summer break.
Unlike digital streaming platforms that allow you to select songs of your choice, this 31-year-old points out that the charm of vinyl records lies in listening to the order of songs on the album as the artist intended, and doing otherwise is a “desecration.”
His collection includes around 800 vinyl records, although that number varies, and his love for collecting was passed down from his father when he was 15 years old.
“Right now, I want, but don’t have, the Japanese edition of Pink Floyd’s album Meddle. I have the Jugoton edition, I had the Italian one, but I want the Japanese version,” Graovac stated.
He explains that Japanese vinyl quality is the best, and the albums are more interesting because they come with additional materials—lyrics in both English and Japanese, as well as posters, which other publishers at the time, especially those from Yugoslavia, did not include.
His love for the sound of vinyl records developed when records were neither popular nor expensive in Belgrade, which is no longer the case today.
“Now that Bora Đorđević has passed away, the price of his records will start to rise. We saw the same thing when Đorđe Balašević passed away. His album Three Post-War Friends, which used to cost 3,000 to 4,000 dinars when he was alive, now cannot be found for less than 150 euros,” Graovac noted.
Source: RTRS
