MP3s? No way, we want vinyl discs!

A Spanish version of this article is here.


A few years ago, my children discovered my vinyl disc player. It's kind of an antique (but not very pretty so perhaps not very valuable) that my mom allowed me to take it with me after one of my trips home (what used to be my home before I left to go to college and later to get married).

I think my dad must have bought it in Cd. Juarez some time around 1990. It already was an old player back then. I might date myself here, but I must say that we already had a vinyl disc player, but a "modern one" in comparison. At that time, I preferred to buy discs instead of cassettes because I could always produce a cassette out of a vinyl disc by recording it onto a cassette, but not the other way around.

Looks like at least at the beginning of this decade, around the time when my children first discovered my disc player, the sale of vinyl discs had been growing. Millennials seem to be interested in this type of antique players.

I think the first vinyl disc that I owned was given to me on my 14th birthday party. It's the first disc of the Spanish band Los Toreros Muertos, which was well received in Mexico mostly for its political-incorrect lyrics and was part of the Rock en Español (Rock in Spanish) wave of the late 80's and 90's. I'm surprised to learn that the group is still touring and in fact has a sold out concert in Mexico City in April of this year.

Since the lyrics of this group are not the most appropriate, I had to choose something less harmful than the most popular songs of this group, although I have to say that "Yo no me llamo Javier" is one of my favorites of this group, and looks like I'm not the only one judging by last.fm's popularity meters. I will not talk about the rest of their songs, let's just say that this group is musically talented (and funny in their own twisted way). What did my children listen to? I played "Dejadme llorar", which is kind of a balad with very safe lyrics. Later, I had to play songs from other more traditional and safe artists like Juan Gabriel (this collection probably belongs to my dad--I hope he doesn't read this because he'll ask for those discs).

Nice memories.