Vinyl in the 21st Century: Kai Zheng

A photo and interview series on college students with record collections.

Kai and I went to elementary through high school together in Santa Barbara, California. He’s now the lead guitarist of classic rock band Trout Club (an homage to the iconic Santa Barbara social club from the 60’s), a student at SBCC, and one of many eccentric employees at our local Trader Joe’s. His record collection perfectly mirrors his love and appreciation for the music of his parents’ generation.

Kai and his records in his backyard.

This is my collection. You’re gonna get stuff from the 1950’s to the 2000’s… pretty wide range.

This is my favorite album of all time, Exile on Main Street, Rolling Stones. I found this at the place on State Street, Just Play Music. I go in there every so often to look for this record, and then one day, I was late to get ramen, and I found it, I said “holy crap!” This album just embodies everything I like about music.

These are very special, these are my mom’s original Beatles records. This is Magical Mystery Tour, original pressing right here. This one is straight up broken into pieces. See that? Nice little cookie cutter out of it.

Moving on, let’s see. This is the first record I ever received, as a gift from my mom, Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin. Not much to say here.

Paul McCartney’s debut solo album, “McCartney.”

This is Paul McCartney’s first ever solo record. Funny story. So Paul posted new tour dates for North America, one of them said LA on it, and we were like, “holy crap, he’s going to LA, Los Angeles!” Little did we know, LA is also the state abbreviation for Louisiana. And the show was in the middle of nowhere. Not like New Orleans or anything. It was this tiny town called Bossier City, just some weird little casino gambling town.

The day of the concert, we were like, “okay, let’s go check out what this town is all about.” We went to a thrift store and in the record pile we found this album. It was like destiny, like some sort of divine intervention. That’s the story of this one, it’s a pretty good story.

Coffee, Kai, and his collection.

This is a box set of David Bowie that my aunt bought me for graduation. Bowie at the Beeb. [Zoe: What’s the Beeb?] It’s the BBC, that’s the slang, what the cool kids call it. It’s very extensive. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, admittedly. It’s a lot of deep cuts, a lot of these are covers and you only start to get to stuff you know on the second side. So, the first side has stuff like Silly Boy Blue and Amsterdam, which you wouldn’t think of David Bowie for. And then you get stuff like Ziggy Stardust and Suffragette City. That was around the time he released Stardust, so that’s kinda cool.

From left to right: Wings’ “Venus and Mars,” Mudcrutch’s “Mudcrutch 2.”

Venus and Mars! Wings! I like this art a lot. This is probably my favorite Wings album. It’s good stuff. Listen to Wings everybody. I don’t think Wings gets a good enough rap, probably the best solo Beatles stuff going on.

Mudcrutch. This is Tom Petty’s other band, not the Heartbreakers, it’s his first band, composed of almost everyone from the Heartbreakers. The record executives, when they were first being signed, they only wanted Tom Petty. So they renamed Mudcrutch to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, to get Tom Petty up in the forefront, and this band kind of melted away. Sort of a bittersweet story.

This is 1. My cat chewed on the corner there, you can see. This might’ve been a birthday present. Just your classic number one hits. It’s very clean except for that [the chewed corner]. That kinda kills it. 1 is fairly new, like 2000s, so it’s cool that there’s a vinyl pressing. It’s cool that artists are starting to do that again. I don’t know. I’ve been out of the loop.

Kai’s cat scratches the screen door.

That’s my cat, Xiao Taozi. It means little peach. He knows how to high-five, if you wanna high-five him later.

“Simon & Garfunkel, Sound of Silence, I mean, c’mon.”

Best Queen album of all time. This is my only Queen album, which is kind of a bummer; I wanna get more. My grandma got me this one. It’s got Bohemian Rhapsody, which is what they’re best known for. Freddie Mercury designed this cover himself; it’s named after the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera. And then the one that follows this is A Day at the Races, which is also named after a Marx Brothers film. It’s very sophisticated. Very cool stuff.

This is my mom’s band and orchestra at La Colina, and this one of their choir [La Colina is the junior high school that Kai and I both attended]. [Zoe: Have you listened to it?] No, I don’t wanna listen to it. Well, maybe I’ve listened to it once. This is kinda cool though, because they manufactured it for La Colina Junior High, which is random. This is like a peek into time, La Colina 1977. That gives me shudders just thinking about it. Not a fun time in my life.

This one is Beggars Banquet. It has Sympathy for the Devil, Street Fighting Man, those are the hits off it, which gave it a bluesy, back-to-the-roots feel. 1968 Rolling Stones, the beginning of their golden period, some might say. From 1968 to, most people say ’72, I say ’73… [Zoe: Why do you say ’73?] Because there’s this album… let me just go through the motions here.

So this is the first one. They released this after Their Satanic Majesties Request, which some people call a rip-off of Sergeant Pepper’s.

Then they continued on with that with this album, actually, I have it right here. Let it Bleed, which was actually released a year before Let it Be, which is cool. It has Gimme Shelter and stuff, they really started to hit their songwriting, You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Midnight Rambler, stuff like that.

I’m missing the next one in the collection, Sticky Fingers. That one’s good.

And then most people consider the golden era ending with Exile on Main Street, the one I showed you that’s my favorite record. But I think it keeps going a little bit to the next one, Goat’s Head Soup. But most people don’t agree with that statement. Those are considered the golden years of the Stones, and they never quite reached that again, but those are good records from that time period.

ELO [Electric Light Orchestra]. The self-proclaimed next Beatles. As soon as you say that, you set the expectation really high. They’re not the next Beatles. They’re good, on their own. They would’ve been better if they didn’t call themselves the next Beatles.

Jeff Lynne, the main guy, worked with a lot of Beatles stuff and produced for the Beatles later in their lives. That’s about as close as he got to being the next Beatles. This one has Mr. Blue Sky on it, that’s what this one’s known for, really.

“I wonder if he was an asshole or not. He looks nice.”

John Denver’s Greatest Hits. Borrowed this from a neighbor, never gave it back. So…

These are good country songs. Country and folk get a bad rap because of all the shitty country that comes on the radio, ya know, like the Jesus stuff. But there’s some good stuff out there if you look!

This is the pot album. After Bob Dylan turned [the Beatles] on to pot. Fun fact, I think they’re all high in this picture. Ringo looks so sad down there. And short. You can immediately tell the difference in songwriting between, like, Help! and like, Drive My Car.

Sergeant Pepper’s, this is the one that’s not broken. Everyone calls it the best Beatles record of all time, I don’t think so, I think it’s Abbey Road. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like the Beatles. Whoever says the Beatles suck, you’ve got to appreciate what they did for music in general.

My coworker is always saying, “Ah, the fucking Beatles suck!” But he likes Led Zeppelin and the Stones, why? Why you gotta say that? I just learned one of my coworkers is a pretty famous musician. He played saxophone with Stevie Wonder, and the Rolling Stones. He tells me all these cool stories about Miles Davis. And now he works at the De La Vina Trader Joe’s.

That’s my collection!

At the end of the interview, I asked Kai why he collects vinyl. Here’s his response.

First of all, I like to collect things, just to have around. And you lose a lot just listening to music digitally. You lose reading the lyrics along from the liner, and physically holding it in your hand. You just lose a lot of the feel from it. You know? When you put on the record there’s that nice little static sound.

I think a lot of the personality is lost too. There’s a big disconnect when you just put music on your phone and press play. But as soon as you have to struggle with this thing and get it on the damn turntable and put on the needle, it’s a whole different experience.

And I hate to sound like a hipster, (mockingly) “it’s the only way to listen to music.” But I think it’s the best way to listen to music for sure. There’s Side 1, Side 2, you can’t shuffle it. You lose that digitally because you don’t have to deal with the record.

This is how the original artist intended for you to listen to it. I’m not gonna say this is how you should listen to it, but most of the artists, that’s how they intended it to be. I think we should go back to vinyl. I feel like I’m being really pretentious here. But it’s a whole different experience listening to music physically. It’s the physicality of it.