My formative years were spent traveling the world with my parents. My father was an engineer, my mother a pianist; both had a passion for travel and adventure. We experienced many wonderful people from all walks of life, making friendships that have lasted a lifetime. My Record Cabinet contains albums which have sound tracked my journey so far.

At first glance, my record cabinet is a well-organised collection of some of the greatest albums ever recorded. It is my very own time machine, conjuring memories from the past and bringing them back to life again. I could give you a thousand examples.

When I was growing up in South Africa in the early 1970's, my sister and I would listen to The Beatles BLUE album over and over again. We knew which songs were sung by John, Paul, George and especially by Ringo. We analyzed every word and image on the gate fold album cover, adding to our knowledge of the band.

Then, as a young teenager in Nottingham, England, I convinced my Grandmother to buy me The Jam's "The Modern World" single (I still have it!). I was too afraid to enter the record shop because the girl behind the counter was a Punk and I was a little scaredy-cat.

My family soon moved from 'Up North' to beautiful Wimborne in Dorset. This was my real learning ground when it came to British Heavy Metal. My new school chums were passionate about music and eager to share their knowledge. We would spend hours sifting through each other's records, making mixtapes of our favourite songs, spend the entire school bus trip discussing the antics of our musical heroes, and on the weekends we would cycle across the Merley Bridge down to Square Records in Wimborne.

My very first gig was AC/DC at the Village Bowl in Bournemouth, the date was 23/05/1978. More would follow; Motorhead, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep and Hawklords. Unfortunately I missed Led Zeppelin at Knebworth in 1979 by a few weeks. Dad had been appointed a dream job in Singapore, our long hot English summer was over.

While living in Singapore in my mid-teens, I purchased a copy of Ozzy Osbourne's DIARY OF A MADMAN. I remember my friends pushing me around at the school locker room, desperate for a look and demanding I tape them a copy.

A few years later, and now a student at the Queensland College of Art, I would incessantly save for new releases by The Smiths. Morrissey was the darling of the college. I was not an instant fan, but after hearing "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want", on the PRETTY IN PINK soundtrack, I was yet another convert to this charming man.

Then came CDs. I must admit I was convinced by 'the powers that be' to upgrade to the new 'improved' format. CD's were promoted to be more convenient, robust and of a more superior and accurate sound quality. Before you knew it records were no longer on the shelves of the local record store, they had been superseded by the new 'improved' digital technology. Sales boomed, not only for new releases but for collectors like myself who purchased their favorite albums all over again. My very first CD was SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, a special collector's edition complete with cardboard jacket.

Most of us traded-in our scratched, warped old vinyl for these new indestructible and shining discs. In hindsight you couldn't blame us, the publicity and marketing campaigns behind this new 'superior' technology were phenomenal! Not only this, but our rock stars loved them too! They promoted new box-sets, special editions and digitally remastered versions of their old masterpieces, complete with bonus or previously unreleased tracks. Business was good, very good!

CD players sold like hot cakes and were the 'must have' item for many years in the early 1980's. Initially, CD players were designed to be incorporated into your HI-FI system, positioned below your turntable and above your graphic equaliser. Soon, however, HI-FI systems were replaced in favor of stand-alone and book-shelf players and vinyl records were sold, traded-in, designated to the garden shed, the opp shop or worse, the local tip.

Car manufacturers discontinued cassette players in favor of CD players, deleting yet another beloved format which was now considered 'old fashioned' and even a bit dodgy. I remember upgrading my car stereo to a 12 multi-disc player which was installed in the boot of my car. It cost a fortune!

Should I mention the Sony Discman? The Sony Discman was the successor of the Sony Walkman, which was another 'must have' item of the early 1980's. The Sony Walkman was revolutionary in the fact that it allowed music to be portable. The mini-cassette player could be clipped to your belt and listened to through small headphones. Mixed tapes allowed you to play your favorite songs 'on the go', fantastic! The Discman however, had some initial 'teething' problems. The CD would skip whenever you took a step, not ideal!

Once the Internet became 'mainstream' in the 1990's, CD to mp3 and illegal downloads became all the rage. Suddenly you could fill a hard drive with literally thousands of albums. The 'lossy' mp3 format is so small in file size that it is in fact compressed to about 9% of the original CD file. Most people are convinced that they cannot tell the difference between the playback of an mp3 file and a CD. I find this very difficult to believe. Nevertheless, music lovers kept converting their CD's to mp3 and stuffing their favorite albums onto their Apple iPods, the latest craze in portable players, now with shuffle mode.

Apple iPods were literally everywhere! It seemed like everyone in the early 2000's was clutching an Apple iPod Shuffle, Apple iPod Nano or if they were really lucky an Apple iPod Touch. Apple iPods varied in storage capacity and features such as the wheel, which allowed a user to scroll through music, videos, photos and games on the device. The last time I checked, the amount of Apple iPods sold worldwide was 390 million! Again, business was good, or was it? Illegal downloads were beginning to rob artists of income, but ironically department stores could not keep up with the demand of media players.

By 2007 CD sales had reached 200 billion discs, but soon physical formats were being replaced by digital files and music streaming.
Once Apple iPhones and Apple iPads became mini computers, the end of the iPod was inevitable. Can you imagine, most of those expensive iPods are now landfill. Mine is displayed on a bookshelf slotted into an 'iPod docking station' which is styled as an old phonograph. R.I.P.

I have not bothered with digital streaming services. I have always become confused when offered anything en mass; a wall of videos at the video shop would stop my decision-making in its tracks, Netflicks and Spotify do the same, I just don't know where to start.

Personally, I jumped ship the day a friend and I compared a digital music file played on his fancy desktop computer versus the same song on his dodgy old record player. The first song we compared was "Norwegian Wood" by The Beatles. I could not believe my ears! Listening to vinyl was like magic; I could hear each instrument clearly; I could close my eyes and point to where I thought the sounds were coming from; I was totally submerged in the music; I was in the same room as The Beatles. Game over!

So, in 2015 I decided to collect my old collection all over again! Some of my friends thought I had gone bonkers, which lead me to spruik the benefits of analog versus digital. I became a vinyl activist! Let me explain the differences very quickly - Vinyl is the only format that is fully analog and fully lossless, making it the 'full-fidelity' listening experience. Sure there is some extra effort involved in listening to vinyl. Firstly you need a 'clean' record a decent turntable with a decent needle, amplifier, and speakers. You can then enjoy music as it was intended, mid-rangey and very warm, with the occasional crackle and pop.

Digital music engineering, particularly for radio-bound music, is often heavily compressed. Compression increases volume, but in turn, the songs lose their dynamics, depth, and vitality. Sound compression is lossy and you can't get the dynamic range back once it's gone. Record producers and artists keep pushing for more volume at the expense of everything else. The past few years have seen a backlash by those who notice how bad the music sounds by the artists they love. Perhaps this has added to the resurgence of vinyl records.

For me, you just can't beat the organic sound of an 'old school' vinyl record. Give me good vibrations, not digital noise.

I found myself visiting the surviving record stores in Brisbane and surrounds, the very same bins I scoured religiously as a penny poor art student in the mid-1980's. Wherever we travel I Google all of the nearby record stores and take delight in visiting them. I attend record fairs and support my local record stores. Record collecting builds friendships and community. I love meeting fellow crate diggers; we discuss music and compare our finds, a great find is termed a gem and they certainly are.

Records themselves capture a particular artist in a moment of time, all of that talent, effort, and creativity pressed into a vinyl disc. The disc is then carefully placed into an inner sleeve and slipped between the album cover. Most iconic album covers have been designed and created by some of the worlds most respected designers and photographers. They somehow represent the album in a visual context that can transform the package into something prodigious- think SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, STICKY FINGERS or even NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS.

My record cabinet is also a history lesson of men and women and their musical creations, their struggle to succeed, their fame and fortunes, their creative highs and sometimes embarrassing lows, their passions and their pain.

My record cabinet is filled with ghosts, because as Lemmy of Motorhead once remarked "Rock 'n Roll is not very good for your health it seems". But there they are, the ones that we love, frozen in time, displayed in alphabetical/ chronological order, waiting for another spin.

Records are a reminder of who we are, where we have been and where we are all destined to go.

Thanks for listening!
Jonathan 2017.