February 10, 2014

A bird in the hand is always better....

The other day, during a particularly snowy afternoon, I was busying myself alphabetizing my cd collection.  Stacks of jewel cases carpeted the floor around me and I got caught up in looking at the colorful inserts, reading the teeny tiny text, and occasionally popping a disk into the stereo that I’d not heard in ages.

Got me to thinking about things, as usual.

Yes, I’m one of those few souls left who actually enjoy my music in the physical form, on one of those little round disks.  (Sort of like how I’m a little attached to reading real, live paper books). These days it’s all about mp3 and wav files.  But not for me.  I guess you could say I want to really feel my music.

When I was a teen and just getting into listening to and collecting music, of course my favorite place to go was the record store-and in my town that was either Musicland, or Alco, or Woolworth’s.  There you could find an endless array of LP and 45 rpm records – I can just about recall the scent of those cellophane-wrapped albums, hear the whop-whop-whop as you flipped through the stacks,  and see the fabulous cover art.

I even remember the first record album that I purchased:  The Bay City Rollers.  Don’t laugh- they were just about as hot back then as any boy band around today.  (“S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night!!”….)

And though I purchased my share of LP albums, I also bought a lot of 45 rpm records.  Back then the store would put a stamp on the record and write in the date of purchase.  I guess this was to guard against someone taking it home, recording it on their 8-track or cassette player, and returning it to the record store. 

These days times have changed, as they are apt to do.  Who would have thought that instead of recording a favorite song from the radio with the tape recorder microphone held to the speaker, one could actually download the same song in high fidelity from the Internet?! Or if you like, download the entire album while you’re at it. 

It’s that easy.  But it’s not quite the same to me.

I still own my record collection and even play it on occasion.  My records and I go back a long way after all, and they’re pretty good companions on a quiet Sunday afternoon.  Well, not so quiet I guess you could say when I’m cranking the BC Rollers!!!