The 1980's

Today I had to dust off my turntable and burn me off a CD from a vinyl album.

You remember those things don't you? They had an "A" & "B" side, they were dust magnets and primitive as hell...but for some reason, they always sounded better than a CD. I guess I'm nostalgic because I used to have a pretty decent size collection back in the late 80's. I must have had over 600 albums and close to 200 "45's".

I was a vinyl fanatic, and obsessive compulsive when it came to the storage and care of them. Every Lp was in alphabetical order, all were inside thier original sleeves and the more valuable ones were sleeved on the outside by a special LP plastic sleeve.

If you wanted to play the LP, there was a certain way that you had to take the record out....your thumb would catch the record as it slid out of the inner sleeve, then when it had came out far enough, you would gently put your middle finger on the center label underneath on the bottom of the record. Then you would put the cover aside carefully and transfer the album to a two handed holding position, with the palms of both hands holding opposite sides of the LP, ONLY TOUCHING THE EXACT OUTER EDGES.

If you at anytime touched the grooves of the record with your fingertips, you would either be shot or hung.

I used to have a huge problem with friends of friends who would be over at my house for one reason or another and want to look though my impressive collection. I would simply have fits if they variated from my album holding technique, and if they put back a record out of alphabetical order, they were never allowed back into the house again.

When your young you seem to move alot from place to place, apartment to house back to apartment.... it just got downright horrible to lug those damn LP crates wherever I moved to. I got the bright idea when CDs started to get popular that I would get rid of all my albums and get them on CDs.

HUGE MISTAKE

They don't always make CDs of record albums, and since I always listen to odd alternative music, it was even worse than I had envisioned it. Trying to scope out eBay for old record albums I used to have in my collection was a cold glass of water to the face. The record in question I was looking for was selling for $125 by some people, they don't make an official release of this CD and probably never will. It was one of my favorite albums of the entire 80's and it just makes me feel like I was alive again, back in the 80's every time I listen to it.

The artist name was Blue In Heaven and the album name was "Explicit Material"

If you ever get a chance to listen to them, which I highly doubt you ever will, you absolutely MUST go out of your way for this experience. In fact I love this album SO much, I will send ANYONE a copy of this on CD "FREE" if you just send me your snail mail address. If you're not sure you would like the music you can let me email you a song in mp3 format...just so you can get a sample of the taste.

As luck would have it, my friend in Indiana that I grew up with saved most of his record collection, now after 20 years, he is starting to downsize...which means he is getting rid of his albums slowly but surely....by coincidence he happened to have the exact album I was looking for, and he assured me that he bought it from me when I was selling my collection off at garage sales years ago. He said I could just have it, free of charge....so not only did I get what I was looking for, I got it for free and it was the exact album that I used to own, which means that there are no scratches or fingerprints....just minor dust particles, but that is always expected with vinyl.

I suppose I have been spoiled with the invention of the computer, when all you have to do is drag and drop the songs in mp3 format into the playlist and wham bam, you have a CD.

I absolutely loved the 80's...but then again, I do have a horrible memory and maybe I just don't remember the bad times I experianced....but when it came to music, I literally would spend hours and hours recording albums onto cassette so I could listen to the cassette copy without having to wear out the records....making hundreds if not thousands of mix tapes over the years for me or friends....you would literally have to "babysit" the record and pause the cassette recorder between each song until you got the next record cued up and ready to play.

So after doing this exact thing last night, that I used to do most of my childhood and half of my adult life, I realized what a damn pain in the ass it really was.

I would have just rather bought the CD off of eBay or amazon.com, if it was within a reasonable price....but alas, they don't even make a CD of this particular album, and as I already said, they probably never will.