There are many ways to damage your records.

Leave them in your car when you run in to hang out with a friend, warping your copy of Blondie “Eat To The Beat”.

Lazily refuse to put the albums back in the sleeves and just lean them up against the stereo rack and then have your high school text-book and Trapper Keeper fall into your exposed copy of Led Zeppelin’s “In Through The Out Door”.

Have the breeze from the open window blow the dust cover down while your Beatles “Magical Mystery Tour” album is playing and listen as the tone arm bounces and scratches its way across side 2.

There are many other ways, but these and a few others are the ones etched into my brain. My “Police – Regatta De Blanc” fell victim to misuse and forever had a skip in the song “Deathwish” forever.

So I learned.

However, there are always accidents, and recently I had one.

I needed to do some work in the basement, and as everything is better with music, I decided to throw on the first record I thought of, which happened to be “Adam Ant – Strip”. I had listened to that non-stop when I was working in the music room as I was finishing it out.

I pulled the record from the shelf, opened the record player and pulled the record out of the sleeve. It so happened that I pulled it out with Side 2 facing up. My favorite side is side one. So I flipped it.

With my index fingers on the edge of the record I spun it in order to turn it over to side one… unfortunately, it slipped from my fingers and fell.

In slow motion I saw it fall and bounce off of the tone arm of the open record player tray, then slide across it into my hands.

I stood frozen for a moment.

I can’t believe I did that!

I turned over the record and could see right away a huge scratch.

I was a bit devastated.

I got this record only a few years ago, but it really found a place in my catalog and due to its continual spins in the music room set-up, it is a Mike classic. I immediately considered the necessity to replace it.

The cover and back cover are ridiculous

but I NEED this album.

I decided to take it upstairs and survey the audio damage.

Much to my surprise, I really heard no damage at all. It was unbelievable. The look of the scratch is horrible. If I were looking at this record in the store I would pass on it. Yet it was imperceptible. You just never know. I have had records that looked mint that have skipped and been unrepairable, and this baby is gauged and still plays great.

Whew!

Thank goodness for the miracle of plastic, or in this case vinyl.