Thursday, October 9, 2008

My cassettes and LPs live!


All this time I have kept the portion of my music collection on LPs and cassettes with no way of listening for lack of a player that worked. But a new toy I got today will let that part of my collection transcend its obsolescence onto CD once and for all.
The new Memorex CD recorder is the first time I have owned a record player that worked in, I don't know, 10 years? 15? The LPs have been put away a very long time, I do know that. Cassettes slipped off the music radar relatively recently...I guess about it's been about five years ago since I could listen to those, not counting the half-ass player in the pizza car.
Now all those sounds have been brought back to life once more. But I didn't buy this thing to just listen for old times' sake. What sold me on it was the fact that I can transfer those recordings onto CD and listen in modern format, so to speak.
Oh, and it also has an auxiliary jack, to plug in another source of music, such as...a microphone? Hmm.....
The first transfer I did was a cassette, of me on the radio as a DJ. I got to be a guest on my friends' regular show in December 1993 on KCHU 770AM in Valdez, Alaska, and ever since then have treasured the tape as much for the memory of my time there as much as the music. I feel better with it safely stored on CD and listenable again. Next was The Rolling Stones Tattoo You, an LP I bought my senior year in high school at Turtle's in Eastwood Mall, thinking the Stones probably didn't have many albums left in them (shows all I knew!)
Now comes the tough part--going through the collection one last time and deciding what makes the transition, and what goes away.
Later, I am going to consider trying to make back the purchase price of this handy new gadget by making CDs for other people. I am thinking, $5 for those who furnish their own blank CD, $6 if I do. Does that sound like a fair price to get back one's music, a piece at a time?