Thanks For The Memories - Record Album Time Machine

My wife got me an ION Vinyl Archiving Turntable for Christmas this year. My last turntable crapped out about 15 years ago and I just never replaced it in spite of the 2 boxes of records I still lug around. (Note: if you're under 30, a record is a 12" round black plastic disc. It's a little thicker than a CD and it has lots of tiny grooves cut into it on both sides. The grooves are where the music is and you have to flip it over to hear the other side. They could hold about 10 or 15 songs. You put them on a turntable with a needle attached to an arm. The needle fits in the grooves and somehow music comes out. Ask your Dad to explain it, kids, your folks probably had one playing when you were made. It's a fun history lesson from Old Uncle Gino.)

I used to be a DJ way back in college days (radio station - not wedding singer) and at one time had probably 500 albums. I worked an 8 - midnight shift at the radio station and our sound booth had an entire wall of albums - I don't know how many thousand. Sometimes friends would stop by and bring a little somethin somethin for the DJ and we'd do requests - anything you wanted to hear we could pull the album and play it. Today you've got that same ability in an iPod but we'd end up with records stacked 4 inches deep on the floor trying to get them all back where they belonged. It was a blast.  

Over the intervening years and numerous moves my collection has dropped to maybe around 200 albums today as some got lost, stolen, sold for $.50 at garage sales etc until all that's left are my favorites and a few others. Aside from moving them, I haven't even looked at them in years. But for some reason as I built my CD collection, I  avoided getting CD's of stuff that I had on record. I've got over 700 CD's but I could probably count on one hand the number of overlaps. And I don't know why - I'm not one of those analog vs. digital purists or anything, and since I haven't had a turntable it's been years since I heard some of my old favorites. 

So when Lisa got me this turntable, which you can either hook into a sound system or via USB to your computer, I thought - well that's pretty cool. Now I can listen to some of those old tracks again and add them to my 13,000+  on-line music collection (which has replaced my CD's - ain't technology a funny thang?)

And I started listening and amazingly most of the albums are in pretty good shape. Sure there's a few hisses and pops, there's some scratches on the most frequently played party records, there's a couple tracks I've had to skip completely because they just bump the needle back when it hits some residue or something in the groove - but for the most part it's all good.

But aside from the nostalgia of the technology - the music is like a stroll down memory lane - even for my addled memory. Here's Paul Revere & The Raiders - the original Louie, Louie guys. That was the summer I spent in Mexico. I was only 11 but Louie Louie and Michelle were big hits that summer. There was this other kid from Kansas City, Mitch or Skip or something, he was about 17 and his hair was a little longer. He could rock Louie, Louie and he had women falling all over him. I could sing Michelle (Ma Belle) but I was only 11 - who cared.

Quicksilver Messenger Service and the New Riders of the Purple Sage? Saw them together in Denver one cold winter evening back in 1972. We drove down in Robbie's Barracuda in a snowstorm - hadn't thought of that in decades. 

There's a bunch of old Beatles including a mono Rubber Soul that proclaims 'it'll never go out of style even if you upgrade to a stereo system some day'. Wow. An upgrade to stereo - go figure. 

CSN&Y's 'Almost Cut My Hair' brings to mind a ski trip in 1973 where a vanload of us piled into a room at Guido's Cresta Haus where the matchbook cover said "No Hippies Allowed". Gary tucked his hair up under his hat when he registered and the rest of us just snuck in.

I can never listen to 'Casey Jones' without remembering my friend Richard and a warm summer evening with two delightful young ladies in Moscow, 1975. My evening ended with a headlights-out gypsy cab ride through midnight Moscow aimed for the Red Star atop the Kremlin and the Rossiya Hotel right outside the Kremlin walls. The cab ride cost me $1 American and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. Anna kept the Workingman's Dead cassette.

Each album, every cut is like a slice in time. It's heavy on rock & roll like Cream, Traffic, Taj Mahal, Leon Russell, The Yardbirds, Jefferson Airplane and, of course, a fair sampling of early Grateful Dead.  There's party music and traveling songs. There's guaranteed sex songs and songs that got me through some hard times. There were anthems and love songs and protest songs that defined a period of my life. Every one points to a special place and time and person

And there's songs in there that are even applicable to my life today - 'Touch of Grey' and 'Old & In The Way' come to mind along with 'Ain't No Woman Like The One I Got'. 

So thanks, Baby, for a special gift.