"A solemn moment with your records is a good investment of your time."

Today’s guest blogger is Mattias Lindeblad, a journalist and a music geek. He has been seen and heard in the Rundgång (SVT / SR), Pang! Pang! (SVT), P3 Apelsin (SR), P3 Live Sessions (SR) and Groove Magazine. In spring 2008 he released, together with his partner in crime Melker Becker, the critically acclaimed book HÅRDROCK – Rundgång, nitar och nackspärr (Semic).

Clear your thoughts. Take a deep breath and let your fingers travel freely along CD-covers. Take a second breath and let you hands go wild amongst your vinyl records. Sorting your albums offers a journey beyond a seemingly superficial nerdiness. It’s food for your soul and a bullet in MP3’s head. Hostile towards technology? No, but I have a great love for music and its packaging. I was eight years old when I fell in love for the first time. The Kiss-album Unmasked (1980) had it all. Good songs, a cover that looked like a comic book and a poster that you could fold out. I don’t know how many times I listened to the album and read the comic that I got my dad to translate. It was as if I had ended up in another world inside myself. Kiss was the perfect band to collect, larger than life itself.

It was also then that I unconsciously chose to say no to trips around the globe, summer cottages or a boat. I wanted to have albums in my life. A lot of them. The covers were important. Hour after hour, I could sit and look for exciting details, memorizing the order of songs and who was the producer. Each album was an adventure in itself. In 29 years my home has become host to hundreds of vinyls and a few thousand CDs. Most of them with amazing artwork, all filled to the brim with great music. I actually remember where and when I bought all of them, what I was feeling and which girl was the object of my affection at the time. In order to update your record collection, it might be good start to sort it. You could do it by sorting them by year of release in the true spirit of Nick Hornby, or by genre or mood – So that you connect with them again, thus bringing memories to life. Hold each album in your hand and take your time. Remember the songs, the feel and the smell of the disc and then sort it. It might sound pathological, but take it seriously and you will go on a musical journey into your past, a trip no MP3-file could ever offer.

Today the poster from the Unmasked-album is long gone, but for some years it sat above the vinyl player in my room growing up to the right of the aquarium with neon lights and Black Molly. I remember mother calling me down from upstairs. The babysitter had arrived. They were going to a party. The popcorn was popped, the sodas where cooling in the fridge and the Swedish detective show Sinkadus was about to start. A series I wasn’t normally allowed to watch, but tonight I could do whatever I wanted. What a party.