A turntable for Xmas
…means reading those crazy crazy liner notes, full of pretention and affection.
…means finding Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band and Steve Martin as a wild and crazy guy.
…means wondering why my wife had so much Barry Gibb when she was a young teen. And uh, Crystal Gayle?
…means laughing over the albums that we gave each other on CD this year that suddenly we can also play on vinyl.
…means marveling over the 25 cent stickers on them, remembering being broke in college and tracking down obscure stuff in bins in used record stores.
…means blasting Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.
…means rediscovering our classical and jazz collections.
…means, unfortunately, hours and hours and hours of “ripping” the vinyl, because the romance of the record will probably only last another few hours. 🙂
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Not a DJ turntable? After seeing the title in Twitter, I was hoping you were going to become DJ Raph. 😉
Happy Xmas to you, Kristen, Elena, and David!
Nope, a USB turntable actually, in order to move the 150 vinyl records over to MP3.
I got the same thing for my Dad this year. =) Unfortunately he’s here and all his LPs are in South Carolina, so he won’t get to play with it till he goes home.
Cool!
I actually bought my grandmother most of the Miles Davis discography — the remastered CDs, though.
And for my mum, I got her the same deal, but Marvin Gaye’s.
I think they’re both quite shocked at the difference between their vinyls and the CDs.
Oh, and the liner notes are all thrown in too, for a bit of nostalgia.
Does the USB turntable have a faster ‘ripping’ mode? Or does it take 40 minutes to rip each side…?
It records in real time. So yeah, this will be a slow slow process. In the meantime, I am just listening to some music I have not heard in years instead. 🙂
That works 🙂
It’s always annoyed me that I can’t listen to a CD as I rip it!
Damn vinyl hacks.
I love my turntable. The comfort of the RIAA curve. 🙂
Here’s an extra goodie if you like cheap wine in a cheaper bottle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ifyUfNj9y4
A no-retake recording. It’s a fun challenge. The rest because YouTube is indie radio.
I spent most of the weekend blowing out my vocal cords on The Beatles: Rock Band, and a good portion of the rest trying to reproduce a deceptively simple blues riff on keyboards to make a backing track for my wife. One of these days I’m going to learn to leave the music-making to the professionals (and/or amateurs with, you know, talent and stuff) and just kick back and listen.
Sam, that is the antithesis of the folk ideal. Make a joyful noise! 🙂
What brand did you get Raph? I went on a big vinyl spending spree on ebay pre-Xmas and need to find something worth playing them with as I just found out my old one was busted.
“I mostly play G and D chords and toss in a C chord to impress the ladies.” – Woody Guthrie quoted by granddaughter, Sarah Lee.
As long is folk is changing, it’s breathing. The problem is the folk musicologists are too often culture archaeologists and prefer it in a box behind glass so their papers on the topic won’t go stale. Then a folkie becomes the guy on the stairs in Animal Farm with Belushi raging over him for bringing dull to the party.
The degree of joy my noises produce in others appears to be an inverse function of their proximity to my location.
And I’m not certain that the folk ideal encompasses trying to sythesize the instrumental part of Norah Jones’ “Man of the Hour” (my best guess is that it was played on an old upright filled with marshmallows).
But I will keep plunking away. ‘Tis better to be composing than decomposing.