The Phonograph, a public service announcement

Dust Magnet, I need to gets me a Discwasher

Having moved recently, the house is still in a state of flux. By flux I mean all the stuff that used to be in "storage" is now piled in the dining room. This is okay for now seeing as how we don't own a formal dining table. One half of the room is piled high with boxes and plastic bins. Several of those are filled with vinyl LP's. Yeah, I'm that guy. I own CD's and have plenty of digital tuneage as well but I like to sit down and spin the wax, as the kids say. This is tounge and cheek here kids, I'm 35. Over the past weekend the wife was out of town with the kids so after I recovered from food poisoning, I finally made it out and picked up some speaker wire and got my stereo hooked up. I dug through the boxes and pulled out GrumpyUnks Robin Trower Live album and tossed that on. At least I think it was his, I liberated many records from Grandmas and most of them were Unks. Right on. It was pretty cool and I'm all set to play the records again. The Sansui 7070 rules

It's somewhat suprising to me that there are quite a few people who think that this technology is completely lost. It's not, and stop throwing your records away! You can buy new turntables, you can buy turntable looking thingys that will rip your vinyl records to MP3 and you can play them on your Ipod. Of course, you may not want to play records at all but there is someone who will take those Herb Alpert, or John Coltrane, or Bread slabs and be very happy listening to them. Quite a few new artists release thier albums on vinyl along with the CD. You just may not realize it. Many old records are being re-pressed on 180gr. vinyl with new mastering and sound kick-ass. You can probably get a belt for that old Thorenz turntable and I know someone makes a cartridge (needle) for your Project One. This means you! After listening to my turntable the other night I was wondering if I could get the new Wilco on vinyl. Yep, from Wilco's website.

Eclectic, to say the least

The new Elvis Costello record was released May 6th of this year on vinyl first and the purchase included a digital download of the record as well. That's what I'm talking about. The coolest thing about this, in my not so humble opinion, is that you can buy ZZ Top's Tres Hombres and Fandango in heavy vinyl with new "old" mastering from the original tapes. In the 80's the bearded ones (seemingly after a giant pile of cocaine) decided to remaster all the albums with huge amounts of....something. I'm not a sound engineer but they sounded like poop. I don't want a disco version of Waitin' For The Bus. Now you can have a recording that is new and sounds like it was intended when it was new. You can't get that if you go to BestBuy and pick up the CD. Now, if this excites you and you do a little internet searching and the first stylus cartridge you find is $5000.00. Keep looking. Yeah, you can drop thirty grand in a heartbeat but you don't have to. I think my Sony turntable was about $100.00. There are less expensive one's out there still. Click through the links I have sprinkled about in this post and you'll find some neat stuff. You can also get vintage records from Tim at World Wide Wax. I've ordered stuff from him in the past with good results. We even have a cool, old school record store not too far from here (sorry, no link). Amazon.com sells music on vinyl. If they have it, it can't be that hard to find.

Get out there and rock people!