Last weekend I was in the mood to listen to my record player. So, I started going through some of my vinyl record collection, all housed in old shipping boxes, and I came across one of my favorite albums out there.
For me, being able to really digest an album in its entirety means a lot more than “listening to music” as most people do today. Songs are the moneymakers in today’s music industry, which has unfortunately driven a lot of artists away from the art that is making an entire album. While I may be generalizing some, pop music has taken off and stayed strong through the last few decades simply because those musicians are willing to sacrifice their art for far more money. You can’t even blame them, though, because who wouldn’t want to get paid more?
But some artists aren’t willing to sacrifice their artistic design and their own influence on a record. They know the process, the emotions, the creation, and the experience of it all is far too intertwined to compromise for fame and money. They’re the few who prefer to keep it to how it used to be. They want to make real music.
Sturgill Simpson is one of those artists, and he’s my favorite musician out there because of his take on the music industry. He’s too old school to care about fame and money and big lights. Instead, he forges his path through experimental country music. And if anyone ever fit the bill of against the grain, it’s Sturgill.
So as I listened to his second album on my record player, I got to thinking about life and expression and art, and I realized I finally came across the perfect image and idea for my first tattoo. You see, I’ve long been the guy to say “I want a tattoo, I just never can decide on something once and for all”. But that suddenly changed when I settled on a tattoo idea based off of one of Sturgill’s tracks on his second album.
Such introspection and deep thought (combined with my favorite artist’s classic voice) led me to a better realization of myself and being able to finally be decisive on a topic that I really do need to be absolutely certain about. If I had never dug through my shipping boxes to find a few records I wanted to listen to, I’m not sure I would’ve ever come to the decision that I know what I want for a tattoo now.