January 31, 2014:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Done. Nothing noteworthy about it.<\/p>\n
Five albums left to go, mostly comedy.<\/p>\n
January 31, 2014:<\/p>\n
“Monty Python’s Previous Record” is done.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
February 1, 2014:<\/p>\n
Okay, here’s the truly stupid one: “Complete Electric Bass Guitar Course,” from Palmer-Hughes\/Alfred Music Co., Inc.<\/p>\n
It’s exactly what it says. It came in a box with a 48-page book of the same title.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
February 2, 2014:<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Some of this stuff is seriously funny; some isn’t.<\/p>\n
February 2, 2014:<\/p>\n
I have never understood the appeal of “Gumby Theatre,” but the rest of “Another Monty Python Record” remains some of their funniest material ever.<\/p>\n
And it was a nice clean transfer.<\/p>\n
That finishes up the comedy. One more Bach album and I’m done.<\/p>\n
Then I send the turntable to its rest and start on the cassette tapes.<\/p>\n
February 2, 2014:<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
February 8, 2014:<\/p>\n
It wasn’t a very long break.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
More to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generalities-rants","category-strange-days"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}