Crate Expectations

In a recent New Yorker cartoon, a man stands with a friend in front of his elaborate turntable setup and shelf of LPs, informing him: "The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience." It's an amusing send-up that any of the 100-plus vinyl obsessives captured in Eilon Paz's new photo book, Dust and Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting(Ten Speed Press), would tell you is so true and so wrong.

In the digital age, there's nothing practical or easy about buying music on wax. And that's exactly why subjects like Questlove (whose vinyl library is as astounding as you'd imagine) and Dante Candelora, who's been amassing Sesame Street records for more than a decade, do it. For these record junkies, crate digging is about the thrill of the hunt, the look and feel of the sleeve, the crackling sound of another memory being made.