Old Records Never Die: One Man's Quest for His Vinyl and His Past

Product Description A Hudson Booksellers Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year, with foreword by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy High Fidelity  meets Killing Yourself to Live when one man searches for his lost record collection.As he finds himself within spitting distance of middle-age, journalist Eric Spitznagel feels acutely the loss of… something. Freedom? Maybe. Coolness? Could be. The records he sold in a financial pinch? Definitely. To find out for sure, he sets out on a quest to find the original vinyl artifacts from his past. Not just copies. The exact same records: The Bon Jovi record with his first girlfriend's phone number scrawled on the front sleeve. The  KISS Alive II he once shared with his little brother. The Replacements  Let It Be he’s pretty sure, 20 years later, would still smell like weed. As he embarks on his hero's journey, he reminisces about the actual records, the music, and the people he listened to it with—old girlfriends, his high school pals, and, most poignantly, his father and his young son. He explores the magic of music and memory as he interweaves his adventures in record-culture with questions about our connection to our past, the possibility of ever recapturing it, and whether we would want to if we could. "Memories are far more indelible when married to the physical world, and Spitznagel proves the point in this vivid book. We love vinyl records because they combine the tactile, the visual, the seeable effects of age and care and carelessness. When he searches for the records he lost and sold, Spitznagel is trying to return to a tangible past, and he details that process with great sensitivity and impact."— Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author of The Circle Review “Calling someone’s work Nick Hornby-like is a bit cliché, but Spitznagel gives high fidelity to Hornby’s feel for music and its relationship to life.” — New York Post   “In this,  Old Records Never Die finds its true purpose. It’s a classic,  High Fidelity-esque revelation that has Spitznagel in the midst of a 'what does it all mean?' moment wherein he begins exploring what-if situations and finding that things often pan out just as they should.” —Pop Matters   “Spitznagel knows that a good story can sometimes lead to a greater truth.” —KQED “Think of it as an updated version of High Fidelity.” —Pause and Play.com "Memories are far more indelible when married to the physical world, and Spitznagel proves the point in this vivid book. We love vinyl records because they combine the tactile, the visual, the seeable effects of age and care and carelessness. When he searches for the records he lost and sold, Spitznagel is trying to return to a tangible past, and he details that process with great sensitivity and impact." —Dave Eggers, author of  The Circle “Spitznagel's quest for the actual records of his youth could have been a gimmick. Instead it's a touching exploration of loss: of opportunities, of loved ones, of the ability to even remotely discern what's hip. Hilarious and heartfelt, this is a book for anyone who has ever spent entire years of their lives haunting record stores, dissecting the merits of Doolittle, and studying liner notes with the intense focus of a Talmudic scholar.” —Jancee Dunn, author of But Enough About Me “I’m working on a list of things that make me laugh harder than Eric Spitznagel’s writing. So far, it includes old Albert Brooks movies, videos of animals riding bicycles and…well, that’s about it. What I’m trying to say is: Eric Spitznagel is hilarious. And this book is perfectly Spitzagelian: Funny, smart, even a bit wistful at times. The way he feels about the Pixies – that’s similar to the way I feel about Spitznagel’s writing.” –AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically “A funny and heartfelt memoir about music collecting that gives birth to a new branch of social science: Gen-X archaeology.”—Neal Pollack, author of Alternadad   “The perfect combination of a vinyl