Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Déjà Vu

Another record that I bought nearly 50 years after it came out. Even after I started to buy records again 8 or 9 years ago, I had a policy against buying things on vinyl that I already had digitally — a policy that made sense when I was listening to music almost entirely on my computer. But in the past few years, that has changed. I’ve gotten much more likely to put on a record than to rely on iTunes, and so when I found a gorgeous copy of this at Deep Groove Records last year, I had to have it. No regrets: this sounds fantastic on vinyl. Though the record was released in 1970, my copy is a reissue from 1977 — but still with the sepia photograph pasted to the pebbled paper cover with the gold deboss. With a gatefold full of photographs (again sepia), this is from the era when you just sat with your records and stared at them as you listened. It’s harder to achieve that in the age of digital distractions, but sometimes just sitting and looking at a record cover is still a deeply meditative act.