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Spin Cycle

June 20, 2009 12:36 am

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

"JUST TAKE those old records off the shelf. I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself "

That lyrical sentiment, from a somewhat radio-worn song by Bob Seger, seemed apropos as I flipped through the mountain of old vinyl albums I had kept since my early teen years.

The albums had been collecting dust in alphabetical order beneath my early 1980s Sony stereo component system. Like most old rack systems, the crowning unit is an LP (long-playing) turntable. The speakers can still shake the windows and rattle the walls, plus they're big enough to hold my mummified remains should my family decide one would be a fitting sarcophagus.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're near death. I discovered it does the same when you're sitting on the floor, sipping wine and looking through old album liner notes, side-1 and -2 song lineups and copyright dates printed by the record labels.

The magic begins when you cue up and drop the tone arm. Somehow that diamond stylus translates the intricacies of grooves in pressed vinyl into an analog signal that presents itself as music. The 1960s term "feeling groovy" supposedly had its origins with jazz musicians of a generation earlier when great music was flowing easily, perhaps ready to be captured in record grooves in wax or vinyl.

My mission was to translate the old records into something no longer needing a turntable. The tool was an Ion USB turntable, which cost about $120. Pop the software CD into your computer, download the music-transfer program and plug the USB cable into your computer. As quickly as you can spin the disc, it is transferred to a 160-byte-rate MP3 format now suitable for playing on a computer, burning to a CD or adding to an iPod or similar digital device.

Playing a record requires a process. It is a more contemplative act than pushing a button for a CD or launching a tune on an iPod. Selecting an album, pulling out the record, carefully cleaning off any dust and then putting it on a turntable and cueing up the song before dropping the needle (stylus) is a little more involved than clicking a mouse. If you let a whole album side play, the reward is 17 to 20 minutes of music.

An early knock against digital music was that it was a little too sterile, a little too clean. Analog had a certain warmth. The pops, hisses, skips of a well-worn record album yield a middle-age familiarity to my newly digitized music.

To my delight, the analog richness of a record album seemed to get captured via the USB turntable.

Song Favorites-- Hmmm?

Spouses or live-in significant others usually experienced separate lives prior to deciding they ought to be together. The tunes they listened to, the music they invested in, might reveal a lot--or at least make you wonder.

For instance, I noticed several New Riders of the Purple Sage records among the collection of my wife, Maria. I couldn't digitize every song--well, I could, but it would've taken a long time--so I asked her for a preferred set list.

Sitting and playing some of the tunes she requested for the digital arsenal, scrutinizing the lyrics had me saying, "Hmmmm, wonder what the story is there?" Her Humble Pie records were pretty dinged up, as well. I won't even get into some Frank Zappa specifics.

Then again, maybe digitizing old vinyl should have a sort of "Don't ask, don't tell" policy associated with it.

Art Beyond the Music

One thing that stood out was how so many rock and "country rock" albums of the 1970s wore beautiful, creative or themed artwork on the jackets. Some of the albums by Yes, the Marshall Tucker Band, Pure Prairie League, Santana and more stand out. Of course, there are also the psychedelic-style albums, which often looked like the guitar player's girlfriend designed it while enjoying an altered state of consciousness. Live albums by Mountain and Iron Butterfly certainly fit that bill.

Some albums included artists' renditions of hot chicks. What red-blooded American boy wouldn't want to be in a rock band after looking at the cover of .38 Special's "Wild-Eyed Southern Boys" album, with its depiction of a curvy lass in slightly too tight, slightly too short hot pants?

I inherited the Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" record from my folks. It riveted my attention in my prepubescent days, due more to the album jacket image of a dark-haired buxom beauty posing seductively in a mountain of whipped cream (mostly shaving cream, I later learned) than the music. Although, that album largely provided the soundtrack to the old "Dating Game" television show. Remember, "Bachelorette No. 2, if I was a banana split, what toppings would you put on me?" Hmmmm.

Big double albums and the many live albums of the '60s and '70s often featured pull-out posters or programs, copious liner notes with myriad things to read, review and contemplate as the disc made its first revolutions on the turntable.

Those were among the best LP jackets and packages. At the other end were some early 1960s practices of record labels using album sleeves to market their other artists, usually with little black-and-white images of the other album cover. There were mostly unwanted commercials, sort of like the ads that ran at intermission at the drive-in. Looking at them today, though, is like looking at pages in a time capsule.

From a 2009 vantage point, reading marketing references to new technology on old album jackets can be amusing.

For example, the Jefferson Airplane "Takes Off" album from 1966 was an RCA product. The album jacket had a text box informing customers that this wasn't any old record--this was a record with RCA's "Dynagroove," which provided "full-bodied tones even when listening at low levels."

How was this possible? RCA was now using a "computer," an "electronic brain" to help transform your listening experience. It was real "Outer Limits," "We have taken control over your TV set," space-age stuff.

The Guess Who's "American Woman" album of 1969 also sported "Dynagroove." Doubtless, the electronic brain helped on the throbbing rhythms of both the title track and the hit song "No Time."

Fair Wear and Tear

Some albums were scratched much worse than others or, possibly, even mucked with remnants of old spills of various libations.

These must've been the faves, often played at parties where the record players were cheap, the music was temporary communal property, and whoever was closest to the turntable often had to pick the album and get it going. These individuals may have been in temporary states of varied physical and mental capability, resulting in a certain cavalier handling of the precious vinyl.

Other albums received heavy use as I tried to figure out guitar notes. I can't read music and my only solution was to sit there and drop that tone arm over and over again, picking along with the record until I got it right. Sometimes it could take nearly 100 needle drops just to break the code of a single guitar riff.

That'll put some dents in the record grooves.

I'm glad I held onto so many old records, although many good ones were sold for a dollar or less at garage sales. Why hang onto them, I wondered at the time. After all, I had copied them to cassette tape. Cassettes were compact, convenient and certainly going to be the music medium that would last for my lifetime and those of my children.

The Good, The Bad and The One-Hit Wonders

In deciding which songs to digitize, some songs that got a lot of wear and tear back in the day failed the cut. Other songs, once considered marginal, were heard fresh and newly appreciated. For most albums, only two or three songs made the transition to digital; some, though, merited full conversion to MP3. A few albums completely struck out with no songs making the 2009 cut. These more often elicited a "What was I thinking?"

A "three-record deal" was a fairly standard contract between a label and an artist. Across many of them, album promotion, creative control and more generated acrimony that saw many artists hating their record labels. Many three-record deals ended up with two albums followed by a final "greatest hits" fulfillment album.

Spinning the old records was a reminder that a lot of great songs never made it to any "greatest hits" collections. Just listen to all four sides of my highly scratched "Exile on Main Street" double album by the Rolling Stones.

Also among my collection were several regional bands, a couple of which were pretty good. Why they didn't make it big when they seemed just as talented as band "X" or another variety the record companies chose to push was a mystery.

I'm glad I kept a few albums with the proverbial one-hit wonders on them.

Some might ask, "Come on, who actually owns a copy of Sammy Johns' 1973 'Chevy Van' album?"

I'll tell you who--maybe a guy who was 16 at the time that song was blitzing the airwaves. Wasn't this story every post-puberty boy's dream?

"Like a princess she was laying there, moonlight dancing off her hair took me by the hand made love in that Chevy van that's all right with me."

This was heavy romance storytelling. You just knew old Sammy had been there, done that. And, I did grow up in a town that was "so small you could throw a rock from end to end" or at least pretty near anyway. Plus, the record was on sale for $1.29 or something.

Any readers younger than 45 who've followed this thus far may figure I'm as out-to-pasture as an lame, old horse needing to be put out of its misery; I tend to see it differently, claiming to have lived in interesting times. Yet, I suppose every generation feels it has some claim to that perspective.

It may be a bit cliche, but Dick Clark was on the money when he observed that your music forms the soundtrack of your life. Rewound, it's a soundtrack of a life lived fully--one would hope, anyway.

An introspective exercise is to come up with a list of five songs you would want played at your funeral. Gazing into this rearview mirror of your life, you realize there were awful times, wondrous times, crushing "How the hell did I make it through?" times and uplifting times.

Play some old records; it's cheaper than a psychiatrist's couch.

I'm still working on my five songs, but you can bet some of them will be afflicted with the oddly comforting pops and hisses transferred over from old vinyl.

Ken Perrotte of King George County is The Free Lance-Star's outdoors columnist. E-mail him in care of
Email: gwoolf@freelancestar.com.