March 8, 2014:

Wow, “Disney’s Sing-Along Song Tape” is short! Like about twenty minutes for both sides together, ten songs.

It’s a collection of random songs from various Disney albums, many of them not really suitable for singing along at all. I think we played it maybe twice when we first got it; the kids didn’t like it much. Anyway, it’s in pretty much perfect condition, so it was a quick and easy job adding it to the MP3 collection.

I think I’m down to fifty-three remaining.

March 9, 2014:

Looking back over my previous posts, I notice I’ve remarked that several albums were short. Which leads me to wonder whether it’s my standards that are off.

I am of the opinion that an LP should be at least twenty minutes a side. If the total time for both sides is under half an hour, that seems too short to me. Is this unreasonable?

Anyway. Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” has joined the MP3 parade. Went very smoothly. Some nice music, but nothing I couldn’t live without.

Funny thing, though — as I’ve mentioned several times, my tape deck runs slow. Most of the time, playing stuff back, I don’t really notice the difference. When I accelerate it to the correct speed it sounds better, but it sounded okay before.

Linda Ronstadt is an exception to this. This album sounded dreadful coming straight off the tape, but when it was sped up by 6% it was fine. No idea why this is true of her and not others.

So — easy transfer.

Blondie’s “Eat to the Beat,” on the other hand… well, the first three cuts were fine. The fourth, “Shayla,” had weird noise. The fifth was okay. The sixth, and the entire second side, were muffled and distorted.

I tried re-recording it, and it got worse — the entire album now sounded lousy. So I bought the Amazon download; not worth the hassle of continuing to mess with it.

It was similar to the problems I had with “Dream Police.” Don’t know what the story is here. I know these two tapes spent years in a particular carrying case, but so did “The Little Mermaid” and “Heart Like A Wheel,” so that’s not it.

It’s a mystery.

March 10, 2014:

“The Turn of A Friendly Card,” by the Alan Parsons Project, has now made the transition.

The sound quality isn’t perfect — there are bits that sound a little muted. But I think the tape always sounded like that.

Audacity crashed midway through recording Side 2, so I had to start over. No big deal, really; I was letting it run unattended while I made dinner.

I honestly don’t remember why I bought this. It’s not bad, but I was never really an Alan Parsons fan. I suspect it was part of a Columbia House sign-up bonus.

I’ve also started doing a little research on Disarray (the ’80s punk band out of Boston, not the later band out of Tennessee) and Das Ludicroix, as I have several tapes of their music; Larry Boyd, the drummer for both bands, was a fan of my novels and sent me a lot of tapes. I haven’t actually started on those tapes yet, and probably won’t for some time yet, but I wanted to see what I could find about them.

The sad surprise I found was that Larry Boyd is reportedly dead; no word yet on how or when it happened. I thought he stopped writing because he was busy, or just got tired of it, but apparently not.

March 11, 2014:

“The Best of the Doobies” has joined the gang.

The sound quality is good, not perfect, as seems to be the case with several of my commercial tapes; don’t know whether it’s a storage issue, poor quality control in production (most seem to have come from Columbia House), or my tape deck going bad on me.

That last possibility… well, these two tiny little pad-like objects, no more than a quarter-inch in any dimension, have fallen out of the tape compartment; I think the glue holding them dried out and let go after long neglect. They obviously weren’t essential, but maybe they helped with aligning the tape properly, and their absence lets it waver a little, so that some data is lost.

Or not. I really don’t know.

Anyway, “The Best of the Doobies” is a really kick-ass album that I played a lot back when our car could play tapes, and that may also have caused some data loss.

There’s one strange thing I discovered when I went to look up some credits — this tape has the sides reversed from the LP and CD editions. The tracks aren’t rearranged, but Side 1 is Side 2, and vice versa.

I debated whether to switch them back, and decided to do so because frankly, it makes more sense the LP/CD way, opening the album with “China Grove” and closing with “Without You.”

March 12, 2014:

I said I didn’t know whether the quality issues I was having came from the tapes or the player.

Now I do know. Because I recorded Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” as performed by the Stuttgard Chamber Orchestra conducted by Karl Munchinger, and it was as crisp and clear and sharp and beautiful as anyone could ask. There is obviously nothing wrong with the tape deck.

And “The Four Seasons” is a very fine piece of music. Glad to have it available again.