The smell of vinyl

Flipping through records. You wouldn't think it was a remarkable act. And yet it was all I needed to take me back to a time that now seems really far away. How can something that was so important seem so distant, especially when it has left such a strong mark on me?

Jeff and Pat and I met up for dinner. Properly, they are Jeff Feinberg and Pat Fontaine, and you might know them as ex-members of Converge, Ire, or The Black Hand. They've been in other bands since those times, bands I have never heard. But tonight they are just a couple of old friends. In this case, a couple of old friends who want to go to a record store.

I haven't been in a record store in a long time. I haven't played my old vinyl records in at least eight years. And flipping through the bins, I am instantly taken back to all those times, and I don't know what to do with that experience. Am I still a hardcorepunk kid? Do I want to remember those days?