I’ve been picking away at writing a rather long article called “Back to Mono,” but rather than waiting for that, here is part of it. The entire Rolling Stones in Mono box set is available for free on YouTube! It appears to be official from Universal/ABKCO, so it isn’t some fan offering, and at the moment I’m the only one in the world who has subscribed to this incredibly great channel. How can that be?
Category: Music
T. Roe Price
Decades ago I enjoyed searching for musical vinyl at a long-defunct store called For the Record in Amherst, MA. They carried used records along with new releases, including imports. I bought most of my British Parlophone Beatles albums at For the Record, and some Beatles bootlegs too.
A lot of budget-priced reissues of Sixties music were coming out, and for $4.29 I bought an LP called “Tommy Roe Collectibles,” an MCA reissue of Roe’s recordings for ABC. Playing it this week for the first time in ages, I am stunned by the superb stereo sound most of the tracks have, with the exception of “Everybody,” which is presented in fake stereo. My favorite track is “It’s Now Winter’s Day,” which is nothing like the Bubblegum style that Roe is known for. “Baby It’s Cold Outside” has nothing on this one.
The best retrospective of Roe’s underrated career can be heard in outstanding mono on Andrew Sandoval’s “Come to the Sunshine” podcast at this link. Any performer who can have a #1 Pop hit in 1962 (“Sheila”) — the year the Beatles signed with Parlophone — and then have a #1 record again in 1969 (“Dizzy”) — the last year the Beatles worked together — deserves attention.
Summertime, and Living is Queasy
This music was composed by Ryan Dann for a Joe Pera video with a Wintertime theme. But I’m finding it works just fine in 90-degree weather, as I run my fingers along the deep scar on my head from skin cancer surgery, and I think about my late father and everything I need to do to sell his house in Arizona.
Return of the Groovy Little Motorbike
For 2019, Honda is bringing the Super Cub motorcycle back to America. This time with keyless electric start, electronic fuel injection, cast wheels, and an anti-lock front brake. Should this be my next set of retirement wheels?
Carousel – Renew! Renew!
It seems that Logan’s Run is right after all. Carousel renewal doesn’t work!
One of my retirement projects, as told back here, was to get my Sony 300-disc CD carousel changer working again. A couple of days ago I finally got around to doing it. There was no avoiding removing all of the CD’s, which took a while.
There are three belts in the player. One of them works the door, another turns the table around, and the third loads/unloads the discs. Immediately I could see that one of them had fallen off of its pulleys. There are text instructions, as well as various YouTube videos, showing how to replace the belts in a Sony MegaChanger, but I ended up finding my own approach to disassembly and gaining access to the belts.
The other belt in back was holding, but very loose, and the belt under the table seemed all right. But of course I replaced all three of them.
After putting the deck back together, I was very pleased with myself, because it worked perfectly. The table turned, the door opened and closed, and a disc loaded and played.
Not wanting to assume success before being certain everything was good, I didn’t replace the 300 CD’s. As explained back here, every CD player I have ever owned, cheap and expensive alike, eventually starts skipping. Unfortunately, the Sony carousel is no exception. I did the usual things in the hope of fixing the problem, but of course they didn’t help. The unit was made in July, 2000, so I’m not surprised.
This relic from the pre-streaming era of music can probably be fixed, but it isn’t worth the additional effort to me. There was a positive outcome to this little retirement project, however. Before the player started skipping I got through almost an hour of listening to music. Playing a couple of very familiar CD’s, the sound was exactly how I remembered it, with all of the advantages and disappointments of CD audio. Loud and clear, but with everything pushed up front and jammed together. Cymbals in particular didn’t sound real. Once again I was reminded of why LP’s have yet to die as a format.
I briefly contemplated buying a new CD player, but then I had a moment of inspiration. I went to the basement and pulled out the DVD player I retired when first moving to Blu-ray. It’s this little gem.
Wow. And wow. At last, Compact Discs sound like they should. I have ripped quite a few CD’s for playback on my Logitech Media Server network, and indeed they sound excellent on the Logitech Squeezebox Touch player. Which proved to me once again that it’s the quality of digital-to-analog converters that makes the difference.
Being amazed at how much better the Panasonic DVD player sounds than the Sony CD changer, I checked the specs and found the explanation. It has a superior digital decoder and DAC that support 192kHz/24-bit audio. Even today that’s considered to be something of a premium feature.
So for now I’m happy, despite being limited to single-disc playback. It’s better than having to rip all of those CD’s, or buy a new player for that matter. Here’s hoping the Panasonic player doesn’t start skipping tomorrow!
Colbert Kids Say the Darndest Things
Joshua knows his Beatles!
John Oliver as Paul McCartney, the equivalent role that Eric Idle played in The Rutles. Further proof that Oliver is, as I have always suspected, Idle’s bastard son!