Original subtitles

(eerie music)

Voiceover:In the beginning, there was silence.

Then came sound.

Voiceover:Humans searched for a way to entrap it.

Hoping they could keep it and tame it.

At the dawn of the third millennium, music seemed to be

all around us, in every place, at every moment.

But where does music come from?

(music crescendos)

(stylus scratches on vinyl)

("The Champ" plays)

Voiceover:Have you ever listened to a vinyl record?

Music comes from here, from the grooves, turntable,

amp, speakers and all thanks to a diamond needle.

Simple click is not enough to listen to the music.

But let's go back and start from the beginning.

I fell into music at an early age, my mother used to

always wake me up to a Mozart record.

From that moment on, records have been my life.

12-inch, 10-inch, 7-inch, colored discs,

picture discs, flexi-discs, any discs.

I have more than 3000 records in my collection,

and I like to keep them clean.

Uncommon behavior, maybe, in the digital world,

considering vinyl's dead, isn't it?

On the contrary, it's very much alive.

Figures online confirm that there are others like me out there.

I'm not alone.

Man:Hey, bud, I think you're supposed to hang your back.

(classical music)

Voiceover:They say the things you love

bring out the best in you.

When I'm at a record fair, I'm not so sure.

The need to get your hands on that rare cover,

that one record that completes your collection,

overpowers even the most generous of souls.

It's quick, it's stealth, it's business, it's a mania.

And, if you know what you want,

you never go home empty-handed.

You have to seize the moment.

Girl:Oh, no, I want that one! Boy: I'm done. All right,

Girl:He got "L.A. Woman," oh, well.

Voiceover:I seized mine when spiralling these aisles.

It's here I met Chris, a vinyl veteran.

(speaks French)

Voiceover:I began to follow him, year after year.

And we became good friends.

Like me, he can't resist vinyl's call.

(speaks French)

Voiceover:I contemplate Chris' words and I ask myself,

"where does the pleasure he speaks about come from?"

How does this old format still survive?

It's time to travel to the core of the grooves.

(electronic music)

Voiceover:Music is the landscape of our lives.

A records collection is like a train.

You keep adding wagons as you go along.

Landscape after landscape, memory after memory.

Record after record.

GZ printed their first record in 1951.

One of the oldest pressing plants in Europe,

now it is the biggest in the world.

Here, for the first time, I've seen tangible sound

becoming concrete.

Voiceover:We can see here, this is the music.

Here, it is the music.

(techno music)

Voiceover:Gazing at these grooves,

I feel like I'm traveling inside them.

Man:was white as snow, and everywhere that

Mary went, that lamb was sure to go.

Ha, ha, ha, ha!

Voiceover:I see Edison imprison sound in wax cylinders.

I see Emil Berliner's Grammophon, the first

to record music onto records.

I hear the whistling of the bombs blend in with

the sounds of the first vinyl records brought to Europe

by the American soldiers.

Since then, the craze has not stopped.

This is the substance on which music is engraved

on for an eternity, vinyl.

Over 25,000 records are pressed here every day.

But wasn't vinyl killed by the compact disc?

London, an easy place to find my bearings.

GPS:After 100 yards, turn right, cross the round-about,

second exit, then turn right, take the exit, then keep left.

Then, right turn ahead, then turn left, turn right.

Then you have reached your destination.

Fresh like a flower, after a night of DJ-ing, I meet

Eddie Piller for a pint, it's 2:00 PM.

(rock dance music)

Voiceover:Eddie is a DJ, like me.

He only plays vinyl, and he fights for the cause.

Eddie:CD is a lie, the groove of a record through a

magnifier is a sound wave, that's what you're playing.

On a CD, you're playing a computer-generated

copy of a sound wave, and a CD doesn't have a fast

enough ability to recreate an actual sound wave.

So this is the big lie that the major record companies

and the people who have vested interests in making CDs

this is the lie that they told you, CDs sound better.

They've never sounded better.

The people who told you that 20 years ago were

lying, and they knew they were lying.

Nothing sounds better than vinyl.

Voiceover:With his clear thinking and diplomacy,

Eddie had pushed me to the other side of the planet.

(voice over PA system)

Voiceover:Today's not just any day, today is

record store day, a world-wide celebration for

independently-owned record stores.

And a great excuse to buy a couple of records.

(speaking Japanese)

(heavy bass music)

Voiceover:Here, in the land where new technology

goes hand-in-hand with tradition, analog sound

prepares its vendetta.

I have an appointment with the future.

I'm about to meet the creator of a new system

that plays vinyl records without a needle.

Sanju:Here, we have been manufacturing laser turntable.

What we do here, is optical system production

and final assembling production.

Voiceover:Could you show me?

Sanju:Sure, could you follow me?

Watch your step.

Here, it is a facility for laser-assisted production.

He's Mr. Setazuka, in charge of laser-assisted manufacturing.

He has 12 machineries, starts from here through

over there, then using each machine, he proceed

manufacturing laser system.

We keep every customers by file, one-by-one.

We have about 1,500 customers, including

Japan, USA and many other countries.

(voice in background)

Sanju:Watch your step, please.

This table is better than analog.

Tiger and lion, which is stronger?

Analog sound quality is better than digitized sound

because analog means 'natural' such as a

conversation right now, is natural, nothing computerized

For me, listen to the analog music makes me

peaceful and relax.

Now let's enjoy music.

(instrumental music)

Voiceover:I'm mesmerized by the sound of this

laser turntable, it's really clear, pristine.

But something is missing.

The record disappears in the machine, just like any CD.

(speaks Japanese)

(classical music)

(beats recording)

(mixes recordings)

(speaks Japanese)

(mixes tech beats)

Voiceover:one, two, three, four

Voiceover:I'm not as talented as DJ Kentaro

but, I too, enjoy making music with music.

My parents wanted me to play the piano,

but I preferred the turntable.

Life in my hands.

(dance music)

Rich:You have to really be gentle with them,

because if you treat your kid disrespectfully,

your kid is going to disrespect you in public, right?

I think records are the same way.

Jerome:You're in the club, it's many people, it's packed,

you're under pressure, it's like, "let's go, let's go."

If I pick up a record, I look at the record and I'm

like, "ah! that one!"

It's different from going through your CD,

I don't go "that one" or that one on the computer.

It's like you have a personal relationship with the vinyl.

It's a love affair, it's a love affair.

G. Rina:Physical response, convenience, feeling

atmosphere, noise.

(speaks Japanese)

The Millionaire:The difference is like being

in the bed with your girl or boyfriend or, you know,

whoever, or like cybersex or something.

You've got to have your hands on.

(electronic music)

Eddie:I DJ all over the world every week, okay,

and one thing I cannot bring myself to do,

which so many DJs do now today, is they have a laptop.

They get the laptop, they open the laptop, they press

'play' and then they stand there.

This is not DJ-ing, DJ-ing is choosing a record that

fits with the record before, get - uh! - that's DJ-ing.

Forget computers and CDs, records that's what it's

all about, personally, from my perspective.

Martin:Hey! Come in. James: Hi, Martin, how are you doing?

Martin:Fine, come in, come on.

Voiceover:It's tea time.

Martin and James are two inseparable DJs.

Martin:They're yours.

Squeaky chair, you've got a squeaky chair.

(inaudible)

James:Terrible.

Martin:Squeaky chair.

James:Yes.

Martin:Still buying vinyl, still DJ-ing Matts in London.

So, it's been good, ten years, it's been good.

James:Still managing to find records, you know,

so that bubble burst, I guess, quite a few years ago.

But there is, you know, still records, too, to be found

without having to spend too much money, either.

Martin:We try to get the records as cheap as possible.

James:Bargains.

Voiceover:Paladins in the lounge music revival

even inspired me as a DJ.

(rock music)

Martin:I think we're a bit refreshing now, because

one, it was so heavy, we have to get our trolleys,

and we have to walk down the road with this box of -

James:You do.

James:A laptop or something, that would be great.

You do find people staring at you when

they see you rolling a record case behind you or,

you know, you have a little singles case.

It does turn heads.

Voiceover:But for all of us, using vinyl can be a problem.

Martin:I know no DJs who turn up with CDs.

It's never really attractive, the thought of turning up

with just a case of CDs.

James:It's not the same, is it? Martin: No.

Recording:As in all things, you must make your

own way through life.

Voiceover:Sure, carrying the records around the world

isn't easy, but we still do it, because we're hard core.

Vinyl's heavy.

Eddie:No, it was different, is in the 1970s,

music was not disposable.

If you bought a record, you owned that record forever.

You can take it out, you can smell it, you can throw it,

you can play it, you can do it, you can bend it -

Now, culture is disposable, "hey, I don't like that"

Throw it away, delete, you don't own anything

When you buy a download, you do not own a download.

You can't take it off your computer, you can't take it from

from iTunes to your hard drive, this is illegal.

With a record, you own it, you almost own that record.

It's a great scam by the music industry.

Voiceover:Welcome to Midem, the world's most

important market for the music industry.

But who knows for how long?

Here, everything revolves around one word.

But where is the music?

Woman in Center:The music industry has changed so

Woman at Right:Globally

Woman in Center:globally, we're now, it's an internet

Woman at Right:It's an internet music industry now.

Woman at Center:Digital is the way to go.

Voiceover:It can translate to something you can

listen to in English, to Italian, for example.

Then if you push a button, it takes you to YouTube

and you can see the video on YouTube.

And I can show you on a map what kind of music

is playing now in Moscow, whoop!

Or New York City, nice.

You get the lyrics, this is the chat.

Voiceover:In the catalog at this store is 9 million tracks.

We have an ala carte store, so you can purchase

per track, and then we have a (inaudible) music offering,

which, again, is unlimited free downloads for a year.

So, a really good package.

Voiceover:And what about vinyl today?

Man at Left:Oh, I love vinyl -

Woman at Right:You can't get rid of vinyl. Woman in Center: The DJ

Man:I miss vinyl, vinyl is so hot, so warm, so noisy

with some crispy scratches that I miss so much.

Man:I wouldn't throw away your vinyls

away just yet, I haven't.

Voiceover:It's four in the morning and my coffee's

spinning at 45 rpm.

For my friend Chris, there's no time to lose.

We're on a mission.

(speaks French)

(speaks French)

(speaks French)

Voiceover:When life runs at 33 revolutions per minute,

nothing can stop you, not even the tentacles of New York.

There's a gold mine of vinyl stores here.

And I've got my sites set on a very exotic one.

Joel:I used to have a disco in Brazil.

I lost everything, so America was the

first place I thought to restart.

I got here, did all kinds of work, like dishwasher

shoe shine, deliver, all kinds of stuff.

And to start finding Brazilian records and figured out

the Brazilian records were worth the money and I say

"Well, maybe it's a good way to stop shoe shine."

Woman:Hey! Joel: What's up, baby

Woman:Sorry I'm late.

Joel:Don't worry, I don't worry about anything.

Woman:All right.

Joel:Okay, so today you're going to do that thing,

fixing the records there, because it's kind of messy

put it a little bit more, from new arrivals

to the regular, you know, side, because

it's kind of messy.

So when the CD came out - phew! - people were

crazy, people want the CD.

But, when the time passed they realized "I used to

have all these records and then I just threw it out."

A lot of people just threw them out, it's crazy.

They now want their record back and it will be

really hard to get that.

Voiceover:Record stores, if you had a keen eye,

you'll find them in places you'd never imagine.

(rock music)

Voiceover:Everywhere I go, the first thing I do

is look for a beautiful island to land on.

My place in the universe.

Vendor 1:I run the Roughtrade East, which is the, I believe,

biggest record store in Europe.

Vendor 2:We had about a total staff of about a 150 people.

Vendor 3:We sell vinyl only here in shop.

Vendor 4:Specializing in vinyl -

Vendor 2:Classic rock from the 70s, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin -

Vendor 3:Funk, soundtracks, 60s stuff -

Vendor 4:Haus Techno, disco, electro -

Vendor 1:Indie, obviously -

Vendor 5:Classical, showtune soundtracks -

Vendor 3:Punk rock stuff and new wave stuff -

Vendor 1:Hack and hip-hop -

Vendor 5:Spoken word -

Vendor 2:And also a lot of jazz.

(Sonny Bono's "I Just Sit There")

Voiceover:It's islands like these where I can

touch, view and smell records up close

that makes digging such a pleasure.

In San Francisco, as in Prague, Toyko, Berlin,

everywhere, I never invite a girl back to my house

to show her my digital collection.

It would be like offering her a cracker

instead of a delicious chocolate truffle.

A shameful thought, right?

Perhaps other people are thinking like me.

American sales of vinyl have recently topped almost

3 million, an increase of a million records

compared to last year.

Vinyl is back.

It's thanks to this record that I met

Philippe Cohen-Solal from Gotan Project.

Backstage, Tango gets its facelift.

(tango music)

The group continues to release their music on vinyl.

Despite the digital revolution.

I'm curious to know what role records have had

in Philippe's life.

(speaks French)

Voiceover:With over 20,000 records in his

collection, we're at no loss for words.

(speaks French)

(band tunes up)

(speaks French)

(Astronaut Frank Borman: "what the sky looks like,

"what the stars look like, do they still twinkle, or are they

"a steady light when you get outside the atmosphere?")

Voiceover:Records, you can hold them in your hands.

Gaze at the sleeves, irresistible works of art.

You can read them like a book or watch them like a film.

You can travel into the music with them.

The world's most valuable zebra crossing.

(Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band")

Tourist:Sorry, yes, there probably was that.

I was just trying to look in the record and the street

and to find the position to display me.

Local Man:Well, the position's a bit further down

this direction here, towards there.

It makes it look, where it is on there, if you can look

he's closer towards the actual wall of the actual studio.

Tourist:Yes, so they moved something.

Local Man:Yeah, they moved it further down, because

they felt it was a bit close to the actual gate.

Tourist:But you stay here all today?

Local Man:No, I just have a walk out while I'm out

for fresh air in London.

Tourist:How many people you say here?

Local Man:Probably about three or four thousand a day.

(Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band")

Voiceover:I brought some records with me.

Peter:Some similar ones, yeah.

Voiceover:So this is - Peter: Yeah, it's very rare, (inaudible) "Transmission".

Voiceover:And this is - Peter: Yes, that's the original "Unknown Pleasures".

Voiceover:This is a - Peter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah -

Peter:That's the reproduction one, that's the original.

You have a "Blue Monday" with silver, that's the first one.

I have one in black.

Voiceover:Is this original?

Peter:Ah, what's that?

Ah, okay, that's - my god, who did that?

Yeah, that's the Italian - it's really weird.

Okay, that I've never seen before.

The biggest mistake, really, is this should not be

magenta or pink, it really should be red.

And so pink is not right, pink's too "pop".

Far too pop, too feminine and it's too pop.

It should be red, it should definitely be red.

(techno music)

Voiceover:My adolescence was marked by

Joy Division and in New Order.

Their records were my daily calling when I dressed

in black and searched for the meaning of life.

Their covers were so mysterious and enigmatic.

I didn't understand "The Craft," but they deeply touched me.

Now I'm sitting in front of the cover's art designer.

Peter:"Power, Corruption and Lies" from 1983 and

I was trying to suggest the new visual codes that were

coming as a result of our relationship with computers.

I chose to transform the alphabet into colors.

So these sequences of colors spell things out.

This is the catalog number of the album FACT75,

this says 'new order,' this says 'power,' 'corruption,' and 'lies'.

This juxtaposition, this represents two extremes.

I still think of this as my mother's living room.

This is the industry and the technology that was

actually outside in the landscape around me.

Voiceover:Record covers were my contact point

to another visual world that existed out there somewhere.

Peter:We didn't need to put the picture of an artist on the

front so that the people would know what they look like.

It wasn't taking me anywhere, well, I wasn't

learning anything, but what I saw of Kraftwerk's

cover of the "Autobahn" in this country, it opened

my eyes to another universe of possibilities.

So I saw cathedrals and I saw factories and I saw mountains,

I saw 5000 years of history in a motorway sign.

I mean, whenever I listen to Kraftwerk, you know, I see

a BMW traveling at high speed past a cathedral.

That's Kraftwerk.

(punk music)

Voiceover:I always found manipulating reality to create

another meaning irresistible, it's fun, like punk.

But punk is no fun.

Winston:Iggy Pop, that's Ricky Sleeper, Patty Smith,

Joe Strummer, boy from Devo, some of these people are dead now.

Sid Vicious, also dead, here's Joey Ramone.

Johnny Rotten, Biafra, here's Klaus.

So this is my 'Last Supper' of the punk rock world.

And now it's a new skateboard.

Voiceover:With his fantasy, San Francisco-based artist

Winston Smith has challenged conventions and

subverted mainstream culture.

Winston:There's one picture, we use on the back of

the original Dead Kennedys "In God We Trust, Inc."

which was a picture of two little old ladies from a

gasoline ad from the 1930s, and I had a whole pile

of things that I was cutting out, and as I cut them out,

I threw them on the ground behind me and kept

cutting and threw it on the ground behind me,

and kept cutting, threw it on the ground.

And a friend walked into the place, the room and saw

this picture by accident that had formed by accident

by dropping this picture of the little old ladies looking

out window onto a picture of the Ku Klux Klan

at a rally with a burning cross.

He said, "oh, that's very good, that means a lot."

And I said, "What?" and looked over and realized oh, cool!

Each picture represent a song.

This is a record made in 1995 for Green Day.

This is a piece done recently for Ben Harper.

This is the inside, kind of a surrealistic nightmare.

This one is an old one from Dead Kennedys.

The use of the cross and dollars on a record cover

shocked many people, but for me it seemed like

something that was an obvious statement: religion, money.

Censorship, they wanted to censor images from

young people so they wouldn't see these things.

But it wasn't because they were bad or naughty pictures,

or, you know, disturbing, it was because they had

ideas that would make them think about our social

systems and how everything is set up to a certain

advantage and who profits from it and who suffers

from it, and so in that way, record covers can be a

mirror to society, because the combination of the two

imagery and music, something you can sink your teeth

into it, you can bite into it and chew on this and

think about this big picture.

That's an opportunity for us to change the world.

Voiceover:Censorship, a simple synonym for oppression.

The word takes me back to Czechoslovakia and

the Russian invasion of 1968.

(military march music)

Prague, a great place to buy records, but also a place

to learn something about vinyl's dark past.

Man:285

(speaks Czech)

Voiceover:While, in East Europe, they were battling

for a bit of rock 'n' roll, in the summer of '68,

I was kicking in my mother's tummy.

(Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech)

Voiceover:There's not just music in records,

but history, too.

(Neil Armstrong's "One small step" quote)

(Margaret Thatcher's Falkland Islands statement)

Voiceover:Have you ever watched the vinyl spinning

from above?

When I was a child, I would watch it for hours, and I

would dream of leaving for some space galaxy and

travel and time into the unknown.

(dramatic music)

(garbled voices)

Philip:Here we have Wagner to Burundi Black

to Montovani, to there's a bagpipe

music provoked from Scotland.

To pop record from the '60s, so this is -

I'm working with history.

What I'm using is all those noises and scratches

because the patina of all the thing that's arrived

on these records, and I think I feel that I'm part of

I'm a new part of the history of this record.

Everything that's ever gone before informs what I do.

And maybe I will be part of the things that inform

people going after.

(applause)

Voiceover:Staring at Philip Jeck's vintage plates,

one thought breaks my ecstasy, where is my friend Chris?

(speaks French)

Voiceover:(in French)

Voiceover:But Vinylmania doesn't always share the same symptoms.

The Archive of Contemporary Music is a public place in

New York, a sanctuary for record collectors and the

haven for those searching for the impossible-to-find.

Its director, Bob George, takes care of more than

2 million records.

Bob:This is a collection of vinyl, classical records.

Right now, this is mostly Reggae material, this whole area

is Brazil, this is Latin, this is the Reggae all moved here.

And then this is African and then Middle Eastern

is on the other side.

These are records that illustrate dance crazes.

So we'll have things like, you know, The Bird, The Frug

Surf, anything that has to do with a particular kind of dance.

This is a whole section on records about God, He is a

very popular artist.

Outer space covers, this is my favorite one, this is

Authentic Music from Another Planet, because there

are so many fake musics from another planet.

This is the authentic one, so that's the kind of stuff we

really love and really go after.

Records about strip and girls and we have a gay section

and things with just sexy covers.

Record collectors are very lonely.

They like to have sexy covers.

These are just Christmas records and you'll see you

have a whole section just on Reggae Christmas records.

Oh, I have to show you one good thing here, it's like one

of our favorite sections on mimes and ventriloquists.

We never lose the audio from the vinyl record, it may get

dirty, it may be hard to retrieve, but it's always there.

And you can't count on that with any kind of

electronic format, but the vinyls will always be playable.

If you have a bicycle wheel, a nail, a cone of paper and a

rubber band, you can play a LP or a 45 because this is a

mechanical medium, it has a better chance of surviving.

Voiceover:These records stare at me.

Each have something that goes beyond the music,

beyond the cover and even beyond the story of their

printing, a personal locker of memories.

(speaks French)

(children singing)

Voiceover:This is "My First Kisses" one of parties we danced

cheek-to-cheek in the dark.

It's not really my favorite music genre, but it had good taste.

I could never afford this record, and my parents

wouldn't buy it for me, now I have two copies.

This is my father's collection, he left it when he left home.

I was only four years old.

(needle scratches on vinyl)

(speaks French)

Bob:There's a certain feel and a certain quality and a

certain color to these older things that are very human.

And, until humans become more electronic and more

digital, I think these things will still have appeal.

But we always have to be ready for the fact that

it could disappear completely.

I say "I am the buddha" and must not want anything.

And the purpose of this is so that I don't start collecting

records again, that I give all my records to the archive.

And if you see on my desk I have a little statue of

the Buddha and in his hands, he has a little piece of

the World Trade Center.

The World Trade Center is four blocks from my

house, so when it came down, my apartment and my

roof was covered in pieces from the World Trade Center.

So I have this to remind me a little bit how fragile everything

is and how important it is to try to preserve things.

And how silly it is to try to hold on to things because

it's all very, very, very fugitive.

Man:It's all going with me, so it's good seeing you

guys again, I'll see you again soon, Bob.

Bob:Thank you so much, we appreciate it.

Voiceover:Maybe you find my passion somewhat

fleeting, but I can't resist the summoning of vinyl.

Before returning home, there's a place I have to visit.

To buy a couple of records.

Man:33s are in there. Woman: I just want to look at 45s

Woman:We don't have a 33 player.

Man:(inaudible) Woman: Yes there is.

Man:Hey, what's up, buddy?

(drum music)

Voiceover:Oh, my god, I'm kind of lost, I can't go out.

(city sounds)

Voiceover:In the beginning, there was silence.

Today, music is everywhere, in every place, at every moment.

But where does music come from?

(rock music)