February 17, 2014:

Did one side (but not the other) of another WKQQ tape, and now have an MP3 of an episode of the 1939 radio show, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Specifically, it’s an adaptation of “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” and it stays pretty close to the original story.

I just wish Bruce didn’t play Watson as such a stupid old man. Other than that, it’s pretty good.

February 18, 2014:

And today I did the other side, which was the second and third episodes of “The Adventures of Superman,” from 1940.

I’m kind of boggled by how much they messed with the myth — but of course, in February of 1940 the myth was less than two years old and still taking shape. In this version, though, Superman grew from infancy to manhood during the journey from Krypton. And he’s apparently not Kal-el; he keeps insisting he has no name.

He has no adoptive parents, of course, since he didn’t grow up on Earth; his secret identity is invented for him by the first two people he rescues, a professor and kid in a runaway streetcar.

The first episode was apparently set on Krypton; in the second he arrives on Earth and tries to get a job as a reporter, but needs a big story to get hired. In the third he foils an attempt to wreck a train.

It all seems primitive now, but I can see how kids in 1940 would eat this up.

Also today, I discovered a 90-minute cassette had nothing on it but seven and a half minutes of a badly-recorded Chinese lesson, so that went straight in the discard box. And a cassette labeled “Pat Benatar: Precious Time” on one side and “Queen: A Night At the Opera” on the other was exactly what it said, and nothing more; since I already had both of those on CD, that was another immediate discard.

February 18, 2014:

Oops. I forgot to post about another tape from yesterday.

It was labeled “Dance Assortment” on one side, and had no other markings whatsoever — no indication of manufacturer, playing time, anything. No idea where I got it; my best bet is that I found it discarded somewhere at some point in the 1990s.

It is indeed an assortment of dance music, much of which I’m struggling to identify. Much of it was edited into uninterrupted blocks, with one song fading into the next so smoothly it was very difficult to decide where to break them.

Some of the songs are cover versions, which makes them really hard to credit; I mean, “Every 1’s A Winner” was originally by Hot Chocolate, but this is absolutely not any of their versions, nor does it match any of the other covers I’ve located so far.

There are three songs (out of seventeen) I can’t identify at all as yet — I never heard them before, and searching on what I thought I could make out of the lyrics didn’t yield any useful results.

I’m pretty sure I can pin down more, but so far the only song I have positively identified as to title and performer is Phil Collins’ “Only You Know and I Know” — not to be confused with the much better-known song with that title by Dave Mason. Several more are pinned down as far as title, but I haven’t yet confirmed whether they’re the originals or covers, as they’re by bands I don’t know much about (e.g., Klymaxx).

So — I have everything converted to MP3, but I’ll take my time about identifying them all, do it piecemeal over the next couple of weeks.

February 18, 2014:

After trying to make sense of “Dance Assortment,” I wondered if maybe my tape deck had gradually sped up, now that it’s back in regular use — had the lubricants ungelled, perhaps? Because some of the stuff on “Dance Assortment” clearly came out faster than it should have.

So I decided I should do a commercial cassette next, just to see.

I picked “Desperado,” by the Eagles. A decent album; I remember I used to play it fairly often when we had a car with a cassette player. When getting credits off the web (and checking run times) I discovered that the cassette had the tracks in a different order than the LP or CD, as sometimes happened — I assume to make the sides closer to the same length. Anyway, I put the tracks in the LP/CD order when I transferred them, and I like this order better than the tape’s.

And the tape deck has not changed. It’s still 6% slow — I had to shift everything to get the playing times to match. After a 6% acceleration they’re all within a couple of seconds, and several songs are dead on the nose.

So the “Dance Assortment” stuff is inexplicably fast. Maybe whoever made the tape sped stuff up on purpose?

And while pulling out “Desperado” I found the tape that’s a major reason I wouldn’t give up having a cassette player in the house. I’ll probably do that one soon.

February 19, 2014:

“Meeting in the Ladies Room” is indeed the original Klymaxx version, and “Move This” is the Technotronic version (featuring Ya Kid K).

Still not sure I didn’t speed them up too much; I’ll test that tomorrow, as well as checking a few more for provenance. Too late tonight.

February 19, 2014:

Tested for speed. I didn’t double-accelerate anything; “Preacher Man” really is that fast.

I’ve got nine out of seventeen definitely identified, but the rest are being difficult. I can’t locate these versions of “La Bamba” and “Locomotion” and “Land of 1000 Dances” anywhere.

Of the three that didn’t even have titles, I’ve got one, so far. (Al Green, “I’m Still in Love with You.”)

February 12, 2014:

I said some of the tapes might be blank. Some are. Or effectively blank, anyway. One is the “Hi, you’ve reached the Evanses” message from our long-dead and vanished tape answering machine, and another is a C-90 with nothing on it except someone saying, “I guess it’s recording, the red light is on.”

But I also did up “Forever Your Girl,” by Paula Abdul, which Julie gave me back in 1990 because she knew I liked “Straight Up” and “Opposites Attract” on MTV. Except I mostly liked the videos, not the music. Not that those are bad songs, I do like them, but I probably wouldn’t have bought the album myself. And the rest of it isn’t as good as those two.

Still, it doesn’t suck, so it’s been added to the collection.

That leaves sixty-nine to go.

February 15, 2014:

Another blank turned up — almost; it’s a 90-minute cassette with Red Rider’s “Lunatic Fringe” missing the opening riff and followed by 86 minutes of blank tape. I already had two copies of “Lunatic Fringe.” I tossed it uncopied.

Then there’s “Poems, Prayers, and Promises,” by John Denver, which I already had — but I have no idea where I got it; I don’t see it on CD. Maybe I had the LP? I don’t remember, and it’s not logged as “from LP.”

But I didn’t start logging that immediately. Checking the runtimes, my version’s slightly faster than the official one, so yeah, it must have been from LP.

Anyway, I don’t need to copy the cassette. At least, I don’t think I do. Maybe I should play it back and check the quality. Hang on, I’ll be back later…

Huh. Yes, it’s from the LP. There’s some surface noise. This is a dilemma. I’m not crazy about the album, so is it worth the effort to replace it? And that assumes the tape’s better.

Well.

I’ve copied, but not yet edited, two other tapes, both recorded off the radio, specifically WKQQ, a Lexington, KY “album rock” station I listened to in the period 1978-1983. One’s some old-time radio shows they played to provide an alternative to radio coverage of the 1980 Democratic convention; the other is just a bunch of music. I started editing the music one, but it’s frustrating, because the DJ talks over some bits and cross-fades between tracks so that I can’t get clean separate copies. Oh, and I already have a lot of the songs, e.g., Pat Benatar’s “Evil Genius.”

I’m two cuts into the John Denver album now; the quality’s pretty good. I don’t think I’ll bother replacing it.

February 15, 2014:

Okay, I managed to get nine songs off the WKQQ tape — there were half a dozen more that I already had. There are some rough transitions and chopped endings, unfortunately, but they’re worth having. I can date this to the first half of 1982.

So I’ve got songs by the Stones, the Who, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffett, Jackson Browne, the Moody Blues… and Silver Condor.

Who the heck was Silver Condor? I do not remember ever hearing of them before. Wikipedia says they released two albums in a brief but moderately successful career; news to me.

Anyway, I’m filing these as a “various artists” album under the title WKQQ, with the station’s logo as the cover art.

February 16, 2014:

Actually, there were at least three tapes from WKQQ. I’ve just finished up with the King Biscuit Flower Hour presentation of a 1981 Jefferson Starship concert in Saratoga, New York.

There’s at least one bootleg of this same show in circulation, which meant I could find data on the web and get the title of a song I didn’t recognize (which was apparently never on an album and they only performed it from 1981 through 1983).

(The 1984 Starship concert from KBFH is apparently much easier to find than the 1981 one — there are multiple bootlegs of it. Confusingly, it’s about two-thirds the same songs, not in the same order.)

But anyway. I got nine of the ten songs — I had to turn the tape over during one of them, so it’s missing. I edited out the ads and DJ chatter and a little applause.

I lifted the cover art from the bootleg, and labeled it “King Biscuit Flower Hour.” It’s not a bad show. The Starship was a bit loose that night, and the tape is slightly muddy in spots, and there’s a scratch on the record at one point, but it’s mostly very decent. (King Biscuit distributed their shows to radio stations on LPs, not tape.)

A decent find.

February 8, 2014:

I need to re-do all that stuff from the “Soul Coughing” tape. I’ve just been listening to the sped-up “Candy-O,” my current project in progress, and it sounds so much better at the right speed! The variation turned out to be 6%, which is pretty damned significant.

But having listened to it at slogging speed, I’ve gotta say that Soul Coughing did some interesting music (though I did not need to have “True Dreams of Wichita” on the tape twice). I don’t think it’s something I’ll play often, but it’s interesting and I expect I’ll play it sometimes once it’s up to speed.

As for Side 2, I already had They Might Be Giants’ “Flood,” so I didn’t need all those tracks, but the rest is mostly cool stuff. But… one mix album, or separate fragments? Hmm.

Oh, and I discovered I had a cassette of Emmy Lou Harris’ “Luxury Liner.” Except I also had it on CD, so that’s already on my computer. The cassette went straight into the scrap box.

Hey, did I tell you guys about the Robin Trower thing? Not a big deal, really.

Several years ago, though, I ripped all my CDs to Chloe’s hard drive, and when I got Beth I cloned that copy, and that’s been my primary music source for awhile.

At least, I thought it was all. But then I wanted to play Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs,” and I was sure I had it on CD, but it wasn’t on my computer, and it wasn’t in the CD carousels, so… I was very confused, but I had o conclude that no, I didn’t have it after all. Maybe, I thought, I’d loaned it to someone and never got it back? It was a mystery.

Well, earlier this week, when I was sorting out the CDs and CD cases, there it was: “Bridge of Sighs.” I still have no idea where it was hiding for six or seven years, but there it was, so I ripped it to Beth, and am pleased to have it back.

February 9, 2014:

“Candy-O,” by the Cars, is now done. There’s some good stuff on there, but I’m reminded now that the Cars didn’t really have a huge variety of sound, which is probably why I only ever got two of their albums, and never got “Candy-O” on CD.

February 9, 2014:

“Walkabout,” by Julia Ecklar, has joined my MP3 collection.

For those unfamiliar with Julia’s music, she’s a filk singer, and this tape was recorded live at a couple of SF conventions in 1988 and 1990. Songs are based on various SF works, such as Ender’s Game, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern, Stephen King’s Firestarter, etc.

Most of it is pretty good stuff. “Daddy’s Little Girl” in particular does Firestarter justice, I’d say.

There are a couple of humorous pieces — “He’s Dead, Jim,” and “I Hate Little Firelizards,” and “Born Again Trek” — but it’s mostly serious.

When I heard Julia sing back in the day I thought she was probably good enough to have made a career of music. Listening to this tape now, well, maybe not, but it’s still very enjoyable.

February 9, 2014:

I’ve redone the Soul Coughing stuff at the corrected speed, and divvied it up into the three source albums. About two-thirds of it actually came from “Ruby Vroom,” and two songs apiece from “Irresistible Bliss” and “El Oso.”

I still haven’t redone Side 2, with music by others. I’ll get to it eventually.

Meanwhile, though, I did Pete Townshend’s “Empty Glass.” Which I was pretty disappointed with when I first bought it, but you can’t return an album because the rest of it isn’t as good as the single you heard on the radio.

It’s actually better than I remembered, but I’m still not crazy about it.

And I counted — there may still be others lurking in odd corners, but so far I count seventy-eight cassette tapes in my possession. At least two (“Tusk” and “Luxury Liner”) duplicate CDs I’d already ripped, and therefore went straight into the disposal box. Three more (and half of another) have been ripped to MP3, leaving seventy-two and
a half — but many of those aren’t music.

Hell, some may be blank.

Others are things like audio letters from eccentric friends, old radio shows, etc.

So I don’t know how much I have to do here. We’ll see.

January 31, 2014:

Another short album, the final children’s record: “Acting Out the ABCs,” from Walt Disney Productions. Wikipedia says it was originally released in 1962, but my copy says it’s from 1968, so I guess it’s a re-issue. It’s children’s songs and counting rhymes at roughly a kindergarten level.

Done. Nothing noteworthy about it.

Five albums left to go, mostly comedy.

January 31, 2014:

“Monty Python’s Previous Record” is done.

It was in pretty much perfect condition, and the humor has not aged noticeably. Of course, a couple of bits (e.g., “The Wonderful World of Sound”) never really worked for me in the first place, but others, such as “The Argument Clinic,” are classics.

February 1, 2014:

Okay, here’s the truly stupid one: “Complete Electric Bass Guitar Course,” from Palmer-Hughes/Alfred Music Co., Inc.

It’s exactly what it says. It came in a box with a 48-page book of the same title.

I don’t own a bass. I don’t ever expect to. At one time I thought it’d be fun to learn to play, so I picked this up at a yard sale for a quarter, but I don’t think I ever even opened the box until this week.

February 2, 2014:

“Child of the 50’s,” by Robert Klein. I was surprised that this didn’t appear to have ever been issued on CD — or maybe I just looked in the wrong places.

Anyway, it’s done now, and came out well; there was a skip I managed to edit out successfully, and some minor scratches, but it’s otherwise good.

Some of this stuff is seriously funny; some isn’t.

February 2, 2014:

I have never understood the appeal of “Gumby Theatre,” but the rest of “Another Monty Python Record” remains some of their funniest material ever.

And it was a nice clean transfer.

That finishes up the comedy. One more Bach album and I’m done.

Then I send the turntable to its rest and start on the cassette tapes.

February 2, 2014:

Done! Done, done, dunnity-done! With Albert Fuller’s “Partitas for Harpsichord” squared away my Bach collection is finished, my Nonesuch records all recorded, and every LP turned to MP3s.

There was a skip midway through side 2, but I’m getting pretty good at editing Audacity files and was able to clean it up without re-recording anything. Other than that it all went smoothly.

So — I’ll probably take a break before tackling the cassettes. Or maybe not; we’ll see how I feel. And whether any of them are still playable.

February 8, 2014:

It wasn’t a very long break.

So far, all the cassettes I’ve played have been in fine condition. In fact, they’re easier than LPs — no dust, scratches, skips, warping, surface noise, etc.

One interesting discovery — where my turntable ran a bit fast and everything came out a little short, my tape deck apparently runs a little slow, and everything’s coming out long.

In fact, it’s bad enough that I’ve just taught myself how to use Audacity to change speeds. Now I need to decide whether it’s worth going back and re-doing the stuff I’d already done. It probably is.

As for what I’ve done so far — at some point in the last fifteen years, someone sent me a tape with an hour of the alternative jazz/rock band Soul Coughing on Side 1, and on Side 2 an hour simply labeled “misc,” which turned out to be a song or two apiece by Whale, Splender, Joan Osborne, Alannis Morrisette, Train (pre-“Hey Soul Sister”), etc. I haven’t identified the sender — if it was anyone here, please speak up, because my memory is not up to the job, and I don’t recognize the handwriting. I’ve eliminated the fan I thought was the most likely candidate as a possibility.

I’m also debating whether to keep Side 2 together as a “various artists” album, or split it up by artist. Side 1 I’ve divvied up into fragments of Soul Coughing’s three studio albums, but recombining them might be a better idea.

More to follow.

January 29, 2014:

J.S. Bach, “Four Concertos for Harpsichord and Orchestra,” Chamber Orchestra of the Saar (though it’s misspelled as “Sarre” here; I know it’s actually the Saar because I have other albums where it’s spelled correctly and has the same conductor).

Very nice stuff. There’s a track or two with some minor surface noise, as if there was a bit of fluff in the way for a few seconds, but I don’t think it’s worth re-recording. It’s very minor.

January 29, 2014:

“Two- and Three-Part Inventions,” all thirty of them, performed by George Malcolm.

Perhaps the Bachiest of all Bach. Lots of fun. Very clean copy. Audacity did crash once during the editing, but recovered just fine.

January 30, 2014:

George Carlin’s “Class Clown” is now added to my collection. Most of it holds up beautifully; a few bits, mostly about Vietnam, haven’t aged well.

I don’t know where I got this album, but I don’t think I bought it new. I played it a few times, but not for decades. It’s in beautiful condition, though, and the copy’s just about flawless.

Firesign Theatre’s “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” on the other hand, has a bad scratch on Side 2 that renders it unplayable. Oh, most of it’s fine, but there’s this one stretch, maybe twenty seconds, that sticks and skips and… well, I’ll be buying this one on CD. (Fortunately, it’s available and not expensive.)

January 31, 2014:

Hey, I forgot to list one! “Music and Songs from HAIR, the Tribal Love Rock Musical,” by Dave Wintour and Pat Whitmore.

What a piece of crap.

This was a bunch of guys simply recording nine of the songs from “Hair” and selling it as an album. No one involved had any connection with the show.

They didn’t do a great job — as in, they didn’t even get all the lyrics right.

I picked this up at a yard sale, under the mistaken impression from a very quick glance that it was the London cast album. Got it home, realized my mistake, never played it until now.

It was an easy transfer, and it’s short, or I might not have bothered. Did it about a week ago.

And next will be today’s addition.

January 31, 2014:

Next, specifically, is the dreaded “Jazz Guitar Bach,” by Andre Benichou and His Well-Tempered Three.

This was one of the rare misfires from Nonesuch. I have no idea who Andre Benichou was, but I can tell you something he wasn’t, and that’s a good guitarist. Oh, he hits all the right notes and stays on the beat, but it’s utterly drab, colorless playing, with all the emotional content of an accountant’s resume.

It also isn’t all Bach; two pieces are of dubious attribution, and another is definitely not by J.S. Bach, but was found in his daughter’s notebook, which was apparently enough to get it included.

I know some people think of Bach’s music as mathematical and emotionless, but they’re wrong, as lots of musicians, Walter/Wendy Carlos among them, have demonstrated. Hell, this guy’s own back-up band gets some feeling into the music, only to have the lead guitar squelch it.

About the only excuse I can make for M’sieu Benichou is that it was 1965, and Messrs. Hendrix and Clapton had not yet demonstrated to the world what can be done with an electric guitar. Hell, there’s one piece on here that Jethro Tull performed on “Living in the Past,” where Ian Anderson got far more feeling into it with his flute than M.
Benichou does with his “jazz” ensemble.

It’s a short album, just under half an hour in all, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad one, but at least it’s done now.

January 27, 2014:

Having finished up all the medieval stuff, here’s a complete change of pace: “How to Tell Corn Fairies When You See ‘Em,” written and read by Carl Sandburg. This 1961 album was the second of two records Sandburg made of reading from Rootabaga Stories; I’ll be getting to the other soon.

Alas, this is scratched and worn, with several skips and sticks; it took a significant amount of work to get a useable copy. If it were available on CD or MP3 I’d have just bought a copy, but it’s not.

The result isn’t good, but it’s better than nothing.

These two records were my mother’s; she bought them new, and when my sibs and I were kids we played them to death.

I don’t think Sandburg is generally remembered much anymore, though the book Rootabaga Stories is still in print. The stories originated as bedtime stories for his daughters. They’re strange and dreamlike, but I loved them when I was little, so I wanted to keep them no matter how crappy the condition of the record.

January 27, 2014:

My copy of “Johann Sebastian Bach: Lute Music,” by Walter Gerwig, is trashed; I don’t know when or how, but it all sounds like crap.

Fortunately, it’s one of the few Nonesuch albums that’s obtainable elsewhere. It was originally a European album, and that European orginal was released on CD in 1999, and is now available for download.

So I downloaded it, and tossed my original vinyl and the Audacity copy.

(I’ve now finished up all the Nonesuch stuff except for half a dozen albums of J.S. Bach stuff. Now I’m working on those.)

January 28, 2014:

I said, “I’ve now finished up all the Nonesuch stuff except for half a dozen albums of J.S. Bach stuff. Now I’m working on those.”

For example, “Sonatas for ‘Cello and Harpsichord,” with Andre Navarra on cello and Ruggero Gerlin at the harpsichord. No problems at all in making the MP3 (there’s a little surface noise in spots, nothing serious), but for some reason iTunes decided it was two different albums, and it took some arguing to convince it that no, all eleven tracks go on one album.

This is nice music. Comparing this with the lute album, I see why the lute fell out of favor; the cello is much more pleasant to listen to.

January 29, 2014:

Finished up “Rootabaga Stories,” the Carl Sandburg spoken-word stuff. More weird, hyper-American fairytales.

There are a couple of things that really date this material. One is that two stories feature a character named Wingtip the Spic.

And then there’s the village where they bake clowns in ovens. I suspect that didn’t come across anywhere near as creepy before the Holocaust.

The stories are from the 1920s, I think. The album’s from 1958.

There were places the needle stuck; took a couple of tries and some careful editing to get a useable copy, and there’s still lots of crackling. But hey, I have the stories.

Now back to Bach. And comedy, and one or two weirdnesses.

January 20, 2014:

Okay, back to classical — “Eighteenth-Century Italian Harpsichord Music,” by Luciano Sgrizzi. Nonesuch, of course.

There are a couple of faint scratches, and just enough warping that I had to cue it up by hand instead of using the turntable’s automatic systems, but mostly it’s clean and clear.

Audacity crashed twice while I was transferring it, though.

Still, it’s done, and it’s good.

January 21, 2014:

Followed by “Quartet Music of the 17th & 18th Centuries,” by the Stuyvesant String Quartet, 1966.

Don’t know what to say about it.

January 22, 2014:

And now “Baroque Music for Recorders,” by the Concentus Musicus of Denmark, 1965.

This is an interesting one because it starts out with a dozen assorted “dances” — honestly, some I think are too short to actually dance to, being under forty seconds — which are simple and straightforward, and then it gradually works through fancier stuff until it finishes up with a sonata for recorder, oboe, violin, harpsichord, and bass by Fasch that’s quite complex and beautiful.

I ran into a problem trying to MP3ize it — there’s a gap in the data, for some reason, between the third and fourth movements of a Handel sonata, so that it crashed repeatedly when I tried to do that bit. I eventually wound up working backward from the end of the album for everything after the bad spot, and that worked — the missing chunk is from the three-second break between tracks, not the actual music, so I was able to work around it and just not transfer those three seconds.

Don’t know how that gap happened. I get an error message, “Missing data,” when I try to play that stretch, and then Audacity freezes and I have to reboot it.

January 23, 2014:

Julie thinks I’m insane to bother copying this one: “Environments Disc 1,” by Syntonic Research, 1970.

One side is thirty minutes of seashore ambiance; the other side is chirping birds.

Audacity crashed the first time I tried, but the second attempt worked fine.

January 24, 2014:

“Four Centuries of Music for the Harp.” Back to Nonesuch. Nice stuff.

January 25, 2014:

“In A Medieval Garden.” Which is nominally by a lute ensemble, but in fact some pieces have recorders, krummhorns, viols, or even percussion in the lead. It’s a surprisingly varied collection, really, with a couple of fun, bouncy numbers mixed in with the more contemplative stuff.

It’s deliberately mostly secular music, from the 12th through the 16th centuries.

I like this one — but it’s really short; only about twenty-eight minutes for both sides together.

January 26, 2014:

Josquin des Prez’s “Missa Ave Maris Stella” and Four Motets, by the University of Illinois Chamber Choir.

I went through a brief period of fascination with Josquin des Prez, and how he fell between medieval and renaissance styles; this was one of the two albums I bought during that period. (The other is coming up soon.)

It’s lovely, but seems pretty conventional compared to the “Medieval Garden” record.

No problems recording or editing it.

January 26, 2014: (From this point on it wasn’t unusual to do more than one in a day.)

“Voices of the Middle Ages,” by Capella Antiqua of Munich. Well-done but largely undistinguished church vocal music from the 13th through 15th centuries.

I had a weird problem with this one — Audacity crashed repeatedly when I tried to play back track 8, “Der Tag ist so freudenreich,” after converting tracks 1-7 to MP3. So I started working back-to-front, from track 20 backward, and when I did it that way track 8 worked just fine. Audacity can be very quirky.

There’s some surface noise on this one; I played it a few times when it was new, and not on a really good system. Mostly it’s fine, though.

January 27, 2014:

And now I’ve squared away the other Josquin Desprez album, “Chansons, Frottole & Instrumental Pieces.” It’s a rather scattered collection, but good stuff.

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December 29, 2013:

“Disney’s Children’s Favorites, Volume II,” by Larry Groce and the Disneyland Children’s Sing-Along Chorus. Twenty-nine kid songs, and I find myself wondering what was on Vol. I, because most of the classics are here.

No problems with the transfer, really, though Audacity did crash once during the editing and needed to be rebooted. The LP (from 1979) seems to have been in perfect condition. I’m pretty sure we did play it, because I remember two of the three originals Larry Groce wrote for it, but there’s no detectible wear at all.

It’s kid songs; what else to say? It’s got some of the same songs as the other albums I’ve mentioned here, such as “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,” but a bunch that I didn’t have, as well.

And that’s the last of the only-for-kids records. There are two more borderline cases, Carl Sandburg reading his Rootabaga Stories, but I think those are suitable for adults, too.

Still more Bach, comedy, baroque/medieval, and miscellaneous to go.

December 31,2013:

I said, “And that’s the last of the only-for-kids records.”

Actually, it’s not; I missed one I’ll get to later. For now I did another comedy album instead — “Welcome to the LBJ Ranch,” a not-very-funny thing where politicians’ recorded answers were used as replies to interview questions that were definitely not the ones they were originally answering. (E.g., Eisenhower is asked, “How many Americans do you think actually voted for Senator Goldwater?” and answers, “About seventy.”)

The album may be best remembered now because Frank Frazetta did the cover caricatures.

It was in excellent condition, because frankly, it’s not anything you’d bother playing more than once or twice. (By contrast, both my copies of Vaughn Meader’s “The First Family” had been played to death.)

So it’s been added to my digital collection for its curiosity value.

January 19, 2014:

“Hair — An American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” the original cast
recording.

That’s the original cast, i.e., the off-Broadway New York Shakespeare Festival cast. The show got reworked pretty drastically before it reached Broadway, so the songs on this 1967 album don’t overlap the ’69 Broadway version all that much. Here we have “Exanaplanetooch,” and “The Climax,” and “Going Down,” but no “The Flesh Failures” or “3-5-0-0” or “Sodomy.”

It overlaps “DisinHAIRited” some, but again, not all that much. And even on the songs you’ve heard elsewhere, the arrangements are often different.

Honestly, it’s more a curiosity than anything else. But I have it, and now it’s in MP3 form. I had to re-record “Air” because of a skip, and there’s some other noise here and there; the second try it didn’t skip, so it’s all good.

“Hair” is so very much a product of its time! It’s weird listening to it now.

More MP3-making:

December 18, 2013:

Took a break from the Nonesuch music and recorded an album that’s entitled either “Peter and the Wolf” or “Favorite Children’s Stories,” depending which label you believe, by the Rocking Horse Players and Orchestra. It’s six stories — well, five stories and an idiotic song — combining music and recitation.

They’re pretty lame, really.

The stories are “Peter and the Wolf,” “The Golden Goose,” “The Brave Tin Soldier” (which they consistently call “The Brave Tin Soldiers” on the sleeve, for no discernible reason), “The Elves and the Shoemaker,” and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” The album closes with a piece of idiocy called “Ozzie the Ostrich,” a song which manages to be inaccurate, misleading, and downright stupid while apparently attempting to be educational — it claims that no one knows where the ostrich lays his eggs, for example.

There are other minor stupidities here and there, such as the actress reading the part of the shoemaker’s wife not knowing how to pronounce “waistcoat,” but it’s mostly a reasonably professional production.

Oddly, it has no copyright notice or other legalities, and I know enough pre-1976 copyright law (it’s from 1966) to know that means it’s in the public domain, whether deliberately or not.

I don’t think I ever played it; it was a yard sale acquisition, and by the time I got it the kids were probably too old for it.

It’s got a moderate amount of surface noise, but no serious problems.

That leaves two more children’s records. Or four, depending on how you look at it.

December 20, 2013:

“Puff the Magic Dragon and Other Songs Children Request,” by the Richard Wolfe Children’s Chorus. 1967, and pretty much what the title says, with classics like “On Top of Spaghetti” and “The Little White Duck.” I got this at a yard sale for fifty cents (the price is still on it) circa 1988-1990, and if I remember correctly I bought it to prove to Kiri that “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmitt” was a real song and not something I’d made up.

We played the first side once, so she could hear that song. I’m pretty sure we never played the second side at all, or either side again.

It’s kinda scratched up; it took two tries to get a complete, non-skipping version of the title track, though the rest made it in a single pass. It’s scratched, though, more than worn, so it’s more listenable than some others I’ve dealt with — between scratches it’s still clear. And except for the skips in the first track none of the scratches are all that bad, there are just a lot of them.

It’s also really short; both sides together only come to maybe 25 minutes. [I’ve noticed this was a recurring theme — I seem to have complained any time an album had a playing time under 35 minutes.]

The liner notes are unfortunate; someone was trying to be hip and failing: “Puff.. is ‘the most’ with the young set now.”

Anyway, it’s a decent collection of kid songs, sung by a children’s chorus that’s decent and doesn’t try too hard.

December 25, 2013: [Yes, I did one on Christmas Day.]

“The Majesty of the Luneburg Organ,” Prof. Michael Schneider playing J.S. Bach.

I think this was the first classical album I ever owned; it’s from the late 1960s. Well, this edition– the original recording was 1958, this is a re-release. I bought it new.

It’s got some minor wear and surface noise, but is mostly fine.

Still more LPs…

December 3, 2013:

“Baroque Fanfares and Sonatas for Brass,” by the London Brass Players, and “Masters of the High Baroque,” by the Collegium Musicum Saarensis. More Nonesuch budget classics. The latter at least isn’t all trumpets — more strings, with cello or even recorder (which I know isn’t strings) playing lead.

No problems with the first one, but “Masters” has some minor scratches, and a bit of fluff got on the stylus and messed up Pergolesi’s Sinfonia for ‘Cello and Continuo in F major badly enough that I re-recorded it.

Still lots more baroque and medieval stuff in the remaining 34 albums, including lots of Bach. (My romantic period came later, after I’d switched to CDs.)

I’ve divided everything I haven’t yet transferred up into categories, by the way, just to see what’s there. Baroque/medieval is the largest, but there’s still a bunch of comedy, children’s albums, and the dreaded “miscellaneous.”

But I have at least one more baroque trumpet album that I’ll probably do next.

Oh, yeah — coming up with cover art to plug into iTunes has been a challenge for some of these. They’re all out of print, after all, and never had CD releases. For two of these last four I couldn’t find a decent image anywhere, and wound up scanning my own covers, which was a pain and not worth the effort, but I get obsessive about this stuff. On “Masters of the High Baroque” in particular I couldn’t find an image that didn’t have a damn price sticker on it. (And going by the prices on those stickers, they were yard sale finds.)

December 12, 2013:

I said, “But I have at least one more baroque trumpet album that I’ll probably do next.”

I did. It’s actually one of Nonesuch’s earliest albums, called simply “The Baroque Trumpet.” Various artists, various composers, from 1964.

(I skipped a week because I was replacing a bad hard drive and backing up all my music. That takes awhile.)

Anyway, it’s good stuff, more varied than some of the ones I’ve done. Side One had some minor surface noise; Side Two was pretty near perfect.