But oh, what a welcome relic it was...
*Note: Must be explained in a patronizing Mr. Rogers' tone:
"For you young childrens out there, this is called a record player. The black discs are called "records" and are made out of vinyl. The large records, or LP's are played at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute, while smaller records, also known as 45's are played at 45 rpm. You drop a needle onto the record and it plays songs on the etched grooves. And guess what childrens, you have to FLIP the record over when Side 1 is finished..." Ha ha ha!
TC had been asking us when we could listen to the record player and finally Bert got it all set up downstairs in our family room. It's where our Christmas tree normally goes. For the rest of the year, we have two chairs there. We figured we may as well use the space.
Here are some of my records that I took out of our media cabinet upstairs (I have way more in our garage in boxes)..
As you can see, a lot of these are from the 80's and run the gamut from new wave, funk rock (Primus), hard rock, J-Pop (Shonen Knife), and guitar based rock (Joe Satriani).
Shonen Knife - a trio of three former office worker Japanese girls who formed a garage band in the 80's. The album itself isn't that great, but they were still pretty new back in the mid 80's.
Def Leppard's awesome 3rd album, "Pyromania", one of my favorites:
Duran Duran's Rio with the famous album cover by Playboard artist and illustrator Patrick Nagel:
Metallica hit the big time with this one, "And Justice for All"..
Although this is the same size as an LP, guitarist extraordinaire Joe Satriani's "Dreaming #11" is actually an EP, or Extended Play. Instead of having five or six songs per side, there are only two. This particular record is quite special since I actually saw Joe Satriani in concert. All of side two was recorded on July 11, 1988 at the now defunct California Theatre in downtown San Diego. I went with Bert to that concert and I remember feeling scared parking downtown (when it was still quite shady and crimeridden) and walking around...
It was one of the best concerts I'd ever attended! Back then it only cost about $20 to go to a concert, not $100 or whatever nonsense they charge nowadays. I remember skipping class to wait in line to buy my ticket at Ticketmaster's booth at SDSU. Back then, you couldn't just buy your tickets online. It wasn't as simple as a 'click' on your laptop. No, you had to wait and hope to God that you got good seats. I think for this show, Bert and I were on the mezzanine. When he performed at the SDSU Open Air Theatre for his "Flying in a Blue Dream" tour, we had 2nd row seats (also gained by waiting hours in line, haha).
Aaaah, the good old days.
Here's the whole kickass album, all 4 songs ("The Crush of Love", "Ice Nine", "Memories" and "Hordes of Locusts":
Plus audio of "Ice 9" from that San Diego performance:
I have more records in the garage to unearth...It will be quite interesting to see what gets pops up. The last record I actually bought was back in '91 or '92 and it was the picture disc for Guns 'n Roses "Use Your Illusion I" (and I may have bought II as well).
I predict many hours of fun from listening to my old records after decades of silence...
5 comments:
I think this is where we say; "they sure don't make 'em like they used to".... ;o)
Tapes were the thing to get when I was growing up, records were already "old" haha. But I remember we used to have this huge cabinet that had a speakers and a record player in it and I got into buying old records at the thrift store and playing them when I was in college/early 20's. Good stuff, man!
Kirk - you got that right!!!!!!! i love the sound and warmth of vinyl....
mary - ah yes, tapes! i loved making mix tapes. my best friend and i would spend hours and hours thinking of themes, figuring out which songs to place on each side, playing with the fader and equalizer and getting ready to start and stop either the record player or the cassette deck! omg!!!! haha! the record players back in the 70's totally looked like furniture too. if it was fancy, it would include a console for a tv!
It's so funny b/c the bf's brother is a HUGE fan of the record player and has a mint collection of albums that he cherishes. He totally wipes the record player thingy and albums with a diaper before he carefully plays em. He even dispenses some weird record player lube on the disc thing before he sets it on the thingy (I obviously have no idea what these parts are called). I recently saw a vintage record album store in the Promenade off of Del Mar. I think they were selling old albums for like $2 bucks?
Haha, a diaper and lube! I'm not that meticulous. ☺ That's pretty anal. I'll have to check out that record store next time.
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