Posts Tagged ‘vinyl albums’
Confusing Days
Don’t be confused. Today is Sunday. The solar eclipse will happen tomorrow. The championship game of the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament tips off today.
I don’t know why I’ve been so disoriented this morning, but I mixed these up at least twice before finally realizing where I was in time and space. Maybe it started yesterday. Cyndie and I huffed and puffed to drag the tangles of vines we’d collected up to a temporary staging area.
Before I attempt to craft an entryway arbor out of them, I will need to spread them out to see the individual twists and turns.
When I went in for lunch, Cyndie stayed outside to putter on other projects weighing on her mind. I got a text from her that she came upon a pile of vines we had missed.
Absentmindedness? I thought we had gotten them all.
It’s the kind of thing that leaves me thinking, “What else have I forgotten?”
My past is getting mixed up with the present recently because we have decided to “declutter” the remaining 100 record albums from our life-long combined collection. Long ago, I sold a majority of our library in the transition from vinyl to digital music, but I couldn’t part with the works of our most adored artists and a few one-of-a-kind records that would never be re-released.
After 45-50 years of holding most of these albums, we are ready to send them back into the world. Since our collection wouldn’t bring an impressive amount of money from buyers, Cyndie sought (and found!) an interested party who would appreciate them in a spirit commensurate with how we feel.
I’m not agreeing to this step cold turkey. For one particularly rare Eric Clapton album, I checked online for the availability of every song and then created a personal playlist in the exact order for my digital library. Attaching the artwork to the file gave me the comfort of a memory that will serve as a special link between albums of my youth and the digital library I’ve switched to as I age.
We’ve successfully saved our children from any guilt they might feel if they had to throw these away after Cyndie and I die.
Now, what else am I forgetting?
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Still Works
I have no recollection of the last time I hooked up my old stereo equipment, but every ten years or so isn’t a bad plan for a trip down memory lane. The old Marantz 2220B that I bought in the late 1970s from Midwest Stereo when I was probably 19 or 20 years old is still functional.
I’m thinking it has been on a storage shelf in the basement since we moved here in 2012. I might have set it up one time shortly after we arrived, but I can’t be certain. Brings back wonderful memories of the years when it was the center of my audio components setup.
I never was able to invest in constant upgrading of components that would have earned me a spot in the “audiophile” club, but treated my equipment like it was worthy for the majority of the time it was in service.
Cyndie authorized use of the dining room table for a temporary setup of the old turntable so I could spin some of the more unique albums she is looking to get rid of soon.
The platter spins, but not exactly at a constant speed. It has a built-in strobe and speed adjustment dials but the control is rather unsteady and the speed never completely holds at the spot it has been set. Oddly, it will randomly stray in either direction, fast or slow.
Regardless, I’m not listening in audiophile mode anymore and close is good enough. After checking out Leon Russell doing a classic “Youngblood/Jumpin’ Jack Flash” medley on the “Concert for Bangladesh” album, I moved directly to the one album from our old collection that I haven’t been able to find in digital form: “The Coyote Sisters” (1984). Leah Kunkel, Marty Gwinn, & Renée Armand.
If I can buy a recordable CD and figure out how I once did this, it would be nice to convert the album to digital so I can add it to my electronic library.
It is rare that I ever listen to full albums these days. I usually set my source to shuffle all the songs in my library and use the skip feature if it picks one I’m not in the mood to hear.
Another treasured LP from my collection is Eric Clapton, “At His Best” (1972) compilation. I found that the double album had two songs that were dinged up enough the needle would get stuck in a loop. That’s okay because I also figured out I just needed to download one album that wasn’t already in my digital library to get all the versions of songs on that “At His Best” album. Then I created a playlist in the exact order, named it, and assigned the album art for the icon.
Honestly, I think it’s a good thing I didn’t end up becoming a particularly picky audiophile.
At this point, I tend to hear most of my favorite songs in my mind even when they aren’t playing through my ears. I hardly use the sound from speakers except to trigger my mental files to play the version stored in the catacombs of my mind anyway.
It will be nice to have a refresher for the Coyote Sisters songs I haven’t heard in many years.
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Album Collection
If I were ever to venture from this moment to visit and romanticize a period of my history, I would gladly focus on the pinnacle of my young experience, and it would have everything to do with vinyl LP record albums of my most adored recording artists.
My parents and older siblings all had records and I became familiar with listening to the music and studying the intricacies of the covers and printed inner sleeves. I would guess I was in my early teens when my sister Linda offered to take me to a record store so I could pick out an album of my very own. My first.
I recall having no clue what to pick and walking up and down the aisle looking at too many choices of which I knew nothing. When I happened upon one in the front of a stack that had a brightly colored sticker touting a hit song, I decided that was the one I wanted. I’d heard the song on the radio, Black Sabbath’s “Ironman.”
When I grew old enough to know better, probably only a year or two later, I realized that choice was barely on the fringes of my genuine interests. Of course, interests evolve. I ventured in a few odd directions that seemed a stretch for me over time, but the constraints were more financial than musical tastes. Albums didn’t come cheap and it was prohibitive to buy an entire LP for interest in just one particular song.
If you didn’t own the record back in the day, you were at the mercy of a radio station to play a song you wanted to hear. Dropping my dollars on an album and bringing it home to break the seal of the clear plastic wrap was a momentous occasion. After setting the needle on the outside edge of side one, it was time to study the images and soak up every word on the jacket.
There is no experience like it today. Not when almost anything you can think of is available in a search of the internet.
The album art was almost as much of an experience as the quality of the music emanating from those vinyl grooves. Or is that, vinyl groove?
My first job after high school was selling records at the local mall. That broadened my exposure to new music and gave me the ability to bring home promotional albums I wouldn’t otherwise have bought.
When Cyndie and I got married, our similar but surprisingly rare number of duplicated albums merged to become one precious collection. That treasure was pared down drastically when digital music became the norm and I sold off all but one hundred gems that were either rare or meant enough to us we couldn’t part with them.
Yesterday, Cyndie pulled them out with a mind of continuing her momentum of purging possessions that we aren’t using. I’m considering pulling out my old turntable to find out if the belt on it is functional at maintaining 33 & 1/3 RPMs.
As much as I’d love to once again hear the music from old records I never digitized, I think I’m finding it even more pleasurable simply seeing the artistry of all those classic album covers another time.
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Forgotten Albums
I went on a download binge of old music from my youth over the weekend. When I finished high school, I spent a year working full-time in a record store. Spending long hours exposed to a repetition of newly released music tends to in grain the songs in a person’s mind.
Every once in a while I get an urge to hear the old tunes again, but the majority of my old album collection was sold long ago. If I want the music back, I need to buy it again. I’m okay settling for digital versions that can be conveniently downloaded, but those offerings aren’t as complete as I need them to be.
My tastes, and the depth of music I was exposed to back then, move beyond the mainstream of what has been converted to digital.
I don’t know what the parameters are that record companies use to dictate what gets digitized and what doesn’t, but it always surprises me when I stumble upon something that has been passed over for upgrade to the latest technology.
Luckily, I still have my old turntable, so if I get truly desperate, I can always shop for the vinyl versions of old favorites that I once thought I would never miss again.
Before I do that, I first need to find the single milk-crate-sized wooden box of the most precious saved albums I couldn’t part with, stored downstairs somewhere, to verify my latest craving isn’t actually one I kept.
My digital music collection has taken on a renewed importance again, as the public radio stations are running one of their thrice yearly fund drives this week. We are already sustaining members, so I avoid the whole pitch and replace radio in the car with my iPod on shuffle.
I keep coming up with songs I had no idea were in my collection. It’s a wonderful distraction during my long commute to the day-job.
After purchasing some old favorites, like the Blues Brothers album that came out while I was working the record store, I needed to update my iPod. I didn’t want to completely sync it with my home iTunes library because the iPod has some music on it from CDs I ripped on my work computer (because it is an old iMac that still has a disk drive in it).
Not thinking clearly, I stumbled on the feature where I could select just the new songs I wanted to add. Thinking I had found my answer, I clicked the 5 new —using that term relatively— albums to copy over and hit sync.
Do you see what I did there?
When it was finished, I had all 5 freshly downloaded albums moved to the iPod… but that was all I had. Be careful what you sync.
I gave in and let my entire home iTunes library re-sync with the iPod. Now I need to go back later and figure out what method I originally used to move only the 4 albums ripped into the work iTunes library, onto my iPod.
I’ve done it before, I should be able to do it again.
I suppose this would be a lot simpler if I’d just store all of my music in the cloud.
Maybe I’m just waiting until they digitize all the music I really want before I will finally take that step. The ball’s in their court.
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Relative Something 