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So by now we all know how and why Sarasota’s Vinyl Music Festival got started: DJs and entrepreneurs banded together to promote Sarasota as a vibrant and thriving place for young professionals and cool music. (You can read the full story by Tim Sukits here.) But to a child of the mp3 generation, what does “vinyl” have to do with it? When you can live-mix on your iPhone (“there’s an app for that”) does anyone actually spin with records anymore? I went to the source, event organizer Rich Swier, and when I posed my question to him I received an emphatic “yes.”

Rich told me that space was actually the limiting factor for physical vinyl at the fest. Most of the venues are not able to accommodate the large turntable setup that is necessary for LPs, but two exceptions are Club Phoenix and Evie’s, where DeeJay Barry (at right) will be spinning on Thursday and Saturday, respectively. The percentage of vinyl to digital is about 50-50 according to Rich, and as my DJ friends are all digital these days I’m definitely interested in experiencing a taste of the old school.

Speaking of old school, I’m assuming I’m not the only 20-something out there who doesn’t know as much as he or she could about electronic music. I am not ashamed to say that during the techno/house heyday of the early and mid-’90s, I was singing along to Boyz II Men and Spin Doctors and nowhere near old enough to get into a club. As it turns out, house music actually goes even further back than the ’90s. Sheesh, are we getting into oldies here? According to Wikipedia this style was directly influenced by disco in the ’70s and ’80s and usually has a strong bass line and up-tempo beats made for dancing. Don’t forget the black female vocalist.

From there it gets all sorts’a more complicated. Electro, for example can be  characterized by strong breakbeats (drum patterns that are “non-straightened,” as opposed to the steady beat of house) and the use of vocoder, but has also come to refer to a new style influenced by indie rock.  Trance is pretty much what it sounds like, and was big commercially for a while because of artists like Tiësto and Armin van Buuren, but now we are seeing house make a resurgence with David Guetta and Steve Angello.

Now that we have an idea of what the heck all this music is and means, I have a few hot tips on the festival. According to Matt Orr, a group of professional athletes visiting Tampa are going to be joining us on the dance floor this weekend and staying in rented houses on St. Armands. Though I didn’t get any names, those behemoths are usually pretty easy to spot in a room full of regs and should add some sparkle to the parties.

Matt also gave me the exclusive on the group of NFL cheerleaders coming in for Saturday’s daytime event at the Lido Beach Resort. And while the under-21ers won’t be able to get into the other Vinyl sets, the Saturday event is all-ages. That means everyone can come see “bombshell” DJ Diamond — I mean — everyone can come hear the lady DJ spin.

Overall my take on Vinyl is be there or be square. I think this is our chance to stand up and support something cool and different happening in Sarasota. For all the complaining most of us do about there being nothing going on here, this is a golden opportunity to make something go off big. I’ll see you at Vinyl, people!

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