Music to my ears, or how I learned to love the cassette as an emblem of...

There is a goodly chance that I will use this outlet to rant about music, and take - up where I left off some years ago, in telling chums about recently acquired albums and gigs. Years ago, I would make a list within a letter, boring innocent people shitless, and thus earning my place in anorak corner for posterity, or until they threw the purple piece of paper daubed with green ink in the bin. I / we progressed to posting cassettes. This enabled tracks to be passed on. " Home recording is killing music" was a campaign by the record companies. Bollocks. Without it, I would not have a collection of jazz cd's, and would not have seen Miles et al.

Sorting my remaining 200 or so cassettes (having carried out a preliminary cull last year) has caused me to re-discover some gems which I have bought on cd for the first time. Others are either going to landfill, or being dumped onto cd, which brings them back to life in a surprisingly good way.

Last week on a car journey, I happily listened to a cd, taken from a best of jazz-rock cassette, compiled from various vinyl albums over ten years ago. I am sure that I had not played the tape for years. Suddenly The Crusaders, Morrisey Mullen & Nucleus etc were brought back into my life. Gary Boyle anyone? I had forgotten him. So: Vinyl to cassette, and then casette to cd. Recycling. 

Now the rant part of the post. We are encouraged to dump outmoded stuff all the time. I am sure that we are not alone in still using video tape sometimes, even though we have a dvd player, plus the video player/cd recorder. Ok I hear you. I am alone on this one. Shut up Chris!

Some of the old formats still work well. I replaced my fifteen year old stereo amp last week. Of course, it has inputs for a turntable. If we had believed the experts, nobody would be playing LP's in 2010 but they are. A lot.

Earlier in the summer/ characterless season which has, according to the calendar, just passed,  I invested in an Apple ipod. When playing on shuffle, it has been a revelation. I have only loaded rock, pop, classic songwriters and bands, with a small amount of blues and jazz onto it, and that is what I intend to stick with.

The shuffle throws up some real goodies. Tonight while typing this, it threw Jimi, Robin Trower and Stevie Ray in sequence. What are the odds? My ipod and me are going to elope, and make a little family of cadmium batteries and live a blissful life in the woods, where nobody can be cruel to us, mocking her cruel domineering corporate Apple ways.                    And relax. 

The interesting outcome of buying the beguilling little minx, is that I realised that I do not actually play the albums which I think of as my favourites, as often as I think I do. The reason? They all have stinker tracks on them! Bung them onto any player/ compilation minus the stinkers, and everythng changes. Your own radio station is the answer. Two good examples are After the Goldrush and Axis Bold as Love. My edit rules.

The other attraction of the ipod, is that part of the reason for my love of the 12 inch LP, was that twenty/five minutes of one artist or style was - I have always thought, ideal. Over seventy minutes is pushing it. Even I turn off.

A final thought for tonight. I don't know if I am alone in being pissed off about music which I love, being used in television adverts. Sarah had to put a cushion over my face regularly, to stop the expletives flying a couple of years ago, when Goin' up the Country by Canned Heat was used in a butter advert. Dark Side of the Moon was sullied, when I stopped for a piss at a services on the M5 to hear "Breathe" coming over the system in the WH Smiths.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggghhhhhh!

A couple of my unused photographs there, from the Tony Gillam "Untangle the Strings" cd  photo session.

http://www.bizibmusic.com/3.html

See also:

http://passengersintime.blogspot.com/

You can also follow his brother if you are unemployed/on drugs/sad/want something good to read/are fixated by the name Gillam. I met someone who was!!