First the tapes. I said I was going to check out “Janis Joplin ’68/70 / Jefferson Airplane 68-69,” which I suspected was all just albums I already have.

Oh, dear. I was wrong.

The first big chunk is “Joplin in Concert,” which I already have. That’s followed, though, by “I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!” which I don’t have, but the quality is really crappy. I recorded it, but it was bad enough I erased the recording, and will try again. (I have tricks that might help.)

I think I actually remember where I got this one; I believe a friend of mine in high school, the late Glenn Cooper, loaned me his copy of “Kozmic Blues” so I could tape it.

Anyway, that left another ten minutes or so at the end of Side 1, and there was music there, but I didn’t recognize it immediately and was busy with other stuff when it came around. I’ll check it out when I’ve re-recorded it.

If I can’t get a clean copy of “Kozmic Blues,” well, I could always buy the album. It’s available on CD or as MP3 downloads.

As for side 2, haven’t touched it yet. I’ve been distracted by CDs.

Okay, this is a side-thread, not about the tapes.

Back in 2008 I ripped all my CDs to my computer — or I thought I did; as mentioned some time back, I’d somehow missed Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs.” Anyway, most of them have survived just fine since, come unscathed through multiple hard drive crashes (thanks to multiple back-ups), and made the transition from one computer to the next safely.

And of course, I added new CDs as they were acquired.

However, somewhere in there — and I don’t know when or how — some of them were corrupted; in at least one case I’m pretty sure it didn’t rip properly to begin with, while others may have suffered in transit somewhere. There’s one where I’m pretty sure the back-up was faulty, and unfortunately, that’s the one I used when I moved them to Beth, and the original is long gone (see above re: hard drive crashes).

So since I’ve been sorting through old media, including filing away hundreds of CDs, I figured this was a good time to clean those up, since I do still have the original CDs.

There were ten that I knew of. I pulled those ten CDs aside, and just a couple of days ago I started deleting them from iTunes and re-ripping them. Billy Idol’s “Greatest Hits” went fine, but today I tried to replace Sarah Brightman’s “Harem.”

Windows Media Player balked; it ripped the first thirteen tracks just fine, but repeatedly stalled out 90% of the way through the fourteenth and final song. Which is one of my favorites — “You Take My Breath Away.”

Fortunately, I realized before I started tearing my hair out that that wasn’t where the damage was in the previous version, and moving stuff to the trash doesn’t actually erase it. I was able to retrieve the old copy, and add it to the thirteen new ones to complete the replacement album. It’s just finished playing through, and appears to
be fine.

Good.

I still don’t know how it went bad in the first place, so I was concerned.

Anyway, it’s fixed, and backed up to three places on two separate external hard drives, and later I’ll be copying it to two more.

Yes, I’m paranoid, but I don’t want to lose any MP3s — I have a lot, and some of them are irreplaceable. So everything gets backed up a minimum of four places.

Next up in the CD queue: “Dirty Vegas,” which I thought was okay except for the untitled bonus track.

Actually, the first eight tracks were fine, but I found some subtle glitches in #9, and #12, the bonus track, was definitely flawed.

Fixed now. Seven to go.