Technology and Music
In 1988, as I was
preparing to move to North Carolina, I sold my large Sony reel to reel tape
recorder. For years I had longed to have a reel to reel, a sign of a true
audiophile, only to realize it was a pain in the ass. I spent hours taping
albums to reel to reel only to never have occation to play them. But it looked damn good in my rack!
At the time I had
hundreds of vinyl long play records. As a fourteen year old, I worked at
Bill Post's APCO station for $1.25/hour. Over the next three years I
would spend every dime on records. It started in 1968 at Clark's Discount
in Shawnee, Oklahoma I bought my first real, non-cut out*, album, Bob Dylan's
"John Wesley Harding." I would
go on to own his entire catalog, both in vinyl and CD.
While living in North
Carolina, in 1990, vinyl records of new releases were becoming hard to fine.
I was a stick in the mud, resisting the switch over to the compact disc.
Once the decision was made, I drove to Spartanburg, South Carolina to a
new discount electronics chain, Leshmires, to buy an Onkyo compact
disc player. My first compact disc was Bob Dylan's "O Mercy." Then began the long process of replicating my
entire vinyl collection into CD’s.
I eventually
decommissioned my $400 Hardin Karmon turntable. An expensive piece of
audio equipment when bought in 1984.
Over the next twenty
seven years, I would acquire over fifteen hundred compact discs. During
my music travels in the mid-nineties, I would be able to have over one hundred
autographed.
Recently, our last two
compact disc players gave out. You can't buy a single disc player these
days. You can go on EBay and shop vintage stereo audio equipment, which I
did to replace my AM-FM tuner. I am still old fashioned running a total
component system, with a Carver amp, NAD preamp and Phase Technology speaker
system. But AM-FM tuners are no long made.
I have one of the best
Texas Songwriter and Americana collections and no way to play them. Not
to mention, it's become a pain to sort, play and refile CD's. How lazy
we've become.
Now we see the reemergence
of the LP vinyl. I do own a PROJECT turntable. A wonderful piece of German engineering. Since I got married, having all my audio equipment
in the living room has been forbidden.
So it sits in the garage.
So on to the next
technology. I set up a Pandora account. Once I had set up all my
"stations" for all the artists in my collection, I bought blue tooth
relays for the stereos in the house. I now get a random selection of my
collection without running to the stereo very sixty minutes.
So what's next? In
my life time I have gone from AM radio and 45 records to LP vinyl and FM radio
to a brief period of cassettes and the romance of 8 track tapes to compact disc’s
and now to total digital. How will we
get our music in the future? Somehow, I
suspect Apple will play a role.
*cut-outs records were
album that either didn't sell or had flaws and they'd cut a notch out of the
cardboard sleeve and discount. The first album I bought off a cut-out
rack was "Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful" which I still have to this
day.
