Who says you can't put new wine in old wineskins?! I want names!

The Cassette, the Vinyl 33rpm & 78rpm Records are (sort of) new again

I'm a terrible person when it comes to money. I make it; I spend it. And I spend it on books, the arts, and music. Sometimes I spend it on technologies that just aren't current. I have a turntable that I play my 78rpm records on (mostly spoken word stuff - like a 1939 version of the Christmas Carol); and some technologies degrade very quickly. The cassette deck, that fabulous thing current in the late seventies and throughout the eighties, is a piece of shit, with its noisy spinning spools and its stretching magnetic tape.

But fervent prayers, a watchful eye, and a valid credit card led me, by chance, to find a little device that will attach to my computer via its USB ports and connect any number of devices with RCA output pins. Why? So that I can input the sound waves, convert them into a MP3 file, mess around with cleaning up the sound quality (do you hear that you cassette bastards?!) and then burn them onto CDs or import them into my iPod.

Some candidates for an MP3 makeover:

In the late eighties Slash Records put out a cassette of Christmas songs featuring the likes of Louis Armstrong (Zat, You Santa Clause and a reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas) and John Lee Hooker (Merry Christmas Baby) and many other jazz and blues greats. I also have a collection of late 60s punk, a long out of print recording of the NBC orchestra, conducted by Toscanini, performing Beethoven's Symphonies, and Eugene Ormandy conducting Beethoven's Ninth with the Philidelphia Orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (best make-out music ever!).

Daryl Hall (of Hall & Oates fame) collaborated with Robert Fripp (of King Crimson fame) on an album that was part of Fripp's master vision for a sonic triptych. However, Hall's record company decided that the LP Sacred Songs should sit in the vault for a few years until the clamouring arty-farty crowd begin demanding it. Fripp envisioned his LP Exposure, Peter Gabriel's first solo LP, and Sacred Songs be released together and listened to as a unit.

The same will be done for a couple of funky, brilliant born-again Christian records by Larry Norman. In fact there is only one place in the city of Vancouver where I've ever found anyone who knows Norman's work. He's another candidate for conversion beyond his own spiritual rebirth.

Amid my hundreds of cassettes and hundreds of records, I'll be able to put my favourites on a hard drive and enjoy them once again.

No, no. Don't be jealous. I'll have you over for some bruschetta and wine and we'll listen to the Motor City 5 and their late 60s screams against the establishment. "Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers!" indeed.

xoxo

M