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Friday, October 2, 2015

Listening To Music Through The Years



Listening To Music Through The Years




I remember the first time I bought a vinyl record.  I complained that something was wrong with it because it was flexible.  The clerk explained this was the new thing, and if you dropped it, it would not break.  COOL!

We used to go to the record store (that was a store that only sold records for you young folks), and we could test play the latest 45’s before we decided to make that big seventy-five cent investment to purchase one.  There were two sides to each 45, and except for a very few occasions, the flip side was never played more than once.  It was always horrible.  The 45’s were great, you could pile them on the player and play songs in any order you wanted.

Sometime in the sixties LP’s became the thing.  Groups recorded multiple songs on one large record.  On some albums all the songs were great, always with a Beatle album, some were like the old 45’s, one big hit and twelve crap recordings that no one ever listened to.

In college my junior year, Don Chasen brought his new Mustang to school.  The car was cool, but the excitement was playing The Beatles “Sergeant Pepper” on this thing called an eight track tape.  A way to play the latest albums in a car!  Amazing!  I seem to remember having to flip the thing over a lot to hear the whole album.

The eight track didn’t last long; it was replaced by a newer smaller "Cassette"tape, more compact and less flipping.  I thought I was cool when I got a tape player and my records became obsolete.  About a year after I made the switch from records to cassette, I saw my first Compact Disc player.  It played one CD at a time, but you could choose any track with a remote, no more skipping through a tape.

By the time I bought my first CD player, they were selling units that could load five CD’s and play songs randomly if you chose.  A few years later I bought a car that could load five CD’s at a time…amazing!

Then my son told me about this thing called an I-Pod that could hold hundreds of songs and could be played through your car’s auxiliary plug.  He now has a feature on his phone that can play anything ever recorded.

Musicians complain that too many people now get their recordings for free and they are being ripped off.  I guess that makes up for all the extra sales they made when everyone switched from vinyl to eight track, to cassrette, to CD.

I still just have my five disc player in my car.  I love technology, but I just can’t keep up with it.  To me Pandora is still a box I don’t want to open.  When my son visits he has a speaker in the shower that plays songs from his telephone which is in another room.  How the speaker works without wires I’ll never figure out.

I recently heard that the latest thing is high quality record players and vinyl records.  Seems some aficionados claim that CD’s and digital audio files are too clean.  They prefer the hiss and pop of the old vinyl.

I think even Edison would be confused.

17 comments:

  1. Shall I beat the crowd, sell my car & go back to the horse & wagon?

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  2. LOL, yes, everything old is new again. I'm glad we hung on to our albums. And there's nothing like a real mix tape.

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  3. SD still has all of his records, tapes and VHS tapes. I may buy him a record player for Christmas. I remember going each week to buy the latest number one single when I got my first job. Row after row of records and listening to the charts on the radio. Good times.

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  4. I remember giving up buying LPs and cassettes, when they brought out cassingles, a smaller cassette with one song on each side, like a 45. still mostly one good song and one that should never be heard. Occasionally the B side was a gem. now I have a shelf full of CDs that I rarely play, since I've loaded them onto the computer and from there to the I-pods. I love my I-pods. I listen via the computer too, while I'm reading blogs.

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  5. People laugh at me for listening to radio. Can I help it if I can't keep up with technology? Still, I'm happy.

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  6. It seems records were around for a long time (perhaps twenty whole years of my life) and then all the other technology came crashing through. I stopped at MP3 players in my pocket, but I believe I've owned at least five entire record collections in my life.

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  7. I remember playing the old vinyl records. The sound wasn't as good as what they have today but somehow you felt more connected to the music.

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  8. I recall all the changes you write about. I especially liked the little sound-proof booths where we could listen to the music before we buy. Cool times, cool times.
    But for many years now I haven't listened to music (except when I teach) and I carry a little radio with me. Do you think it's an age thing that I'd rather listen to talk shows now?

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  9. i had lps and 45s as a kid, 8-tracks and lps in my early teens, soon replaced w/ cassettes. remember when we used to see ribbons of cassette and 8-track tape glinting along the roadways after someone's tape got caught up and they ripped it out and threw it out as trash?

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  10. We still have a bunch of old 45s, LP, cassettes, and 8-tracks. Some of the 45s are probably collectors' items... like Elvis on the original Sun label... but I can't seem to bring myself to sell them. Ironically, our older son made a comment about how he liked the way records sound, so I unloaded a bunch of the LPs on him. Some of my favorite cassettes, my hubby has transferred onto CD for me. But an iPod? Nope, don't have one. I'm happy to stick with CDs, even if I play them on my one-at-a-time player here in my office.

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  11. I remember all this too. I still have vinyl, but nothing to play them on.

    Thanks for the cool memories.

    Have a fabulous day. ☺

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  12. I went through all those stages. I still have a ton of tapes but luckily, I have a really old vehicle that still plays tapes. I have to use a tape adapter to play my MP3 through my car speakers. I am so behind. I hear new vehicles no longer have CD players.

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  13. Thanks for the walk down memory lane! Luckily, I skipped the 8-track tapes, but I remember when we moved from South Carolina to Florida over 8 years ago and we decided to give away all our records, since we hadn't played them in eons and didn't even have a working record player. When we gathered them together before hauling them off to the Salvation Army, my youngest son picked one up, looked at it, and said, "So what is this...is this like a big black CD?"

    I love my iPod now!

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  14. I too went through all those in my growing up years as a teenage. We are
    blessed to have experienced those changes as time passed by. I still prefer
    vinyl and. Thank you for sharing.

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  15. We listened to the local radio station (a shout out to WGIL am) in Galesburg, Il. every Sunday noon to hear the top five records of the week based on sales at Lindstrom's Record Shop. circa 1960, good times.

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  16. Way back before he got all cool and left home for college, my son Genius hooked me up with Zune for all my music needs. Now I am getting the yellow exclamation mark of death on some of my favorite songs. I guess I have played them until they wore out. Or the artists have renegotiated the rights.

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  17. Just like when i go into a phone store, i think to myself, Alexander Graham Bell never dreamed of anything like this.

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