Every Piece Of Vinyl ....

I was looking at all the books I have,  and was thinking "Will I ever read all of these?" . The same goes for DVDs and CDs . With the digitalisation of music, plus streaming , and the phenomenal fall in price music has become easy to buy without listening to it.

People used to make tapes and that had to be done in real time , but now it's just a playlist and if there is little effort in producing it then there will be little attention payed to it by listener. I see loads of playlists shared each day , but will take more notice of a single song in some format or other.

Digital media is so easy to aquire , put aside for future listening, then never revisit. Books are slightly different in that you may put them aside, but usually you have them displayed in a bookcase or something and always tend to buy them with at least the intention of reading. That is not always the case with digital media, and you can include ebooks with that , so easy to acquire and so easy to forget about.

I have bought very few ebooks but have acquired a lot as many are public domain and available for free or very cheaply.

Back to vinyl , every record I have has been played at least once, and many times more often. Buying vinyl creates a sort of tangible connection with the music, the covers are often an adventure in themselves (thinking Hawkwind's "In Search of Space" and Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" newspaper cover).

I have a few picture discs including Kate Bush's zoetropic picture disc of "Running Up That Hill" and the Star Wars and Jack White " Lazaretto"discs with the etched holograms all of which need lights or strobes to bring out the images, but I can't find the Kate Bush one although I posted it on instagram a few years back, maybe I will try doing it again soon and put it on Youtube.

So what should I share this time, we'll go with "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath because of the Vertigo Swirl which is one of the best simple optical effects I have ever seen , and you don't get that on digital, sometimes it's great to watch the record just  play.

Noise Is Good

Well sometimes. Sometimes you want quiet but someimesnoise lets you know that there is someone or something else there, be it a radio, tv, someone else in the house or whatever.

I was just in the shower and could hear something that sounded like the "Theme From The X-Files" and realisedit seemed to be coming through either the shower drain or the shower head. Totally weird but I wonder if that is where Mark Snow got the idea from. Who knows?

Quiet is also good at times, sometimes it's just good to lie on the bed with an eye mask in a dark room and complete quiet and empty your mind. A great form of relaxation, and after it I then want NOISE.

I love playing stuff on vinyl because there's no remote, so no skipping and you can actually sit and enjoy the music.

When I walk  I have a decent set of headphones so the phone / headphone combination allows me to listen to whatever I want (as long as it's on the phone). I don't use music streaming services because I think they're unworkable business model for artists (unless you're Ed Sheeran) but I still have a huge selection on there. Although in this creeping inherent tech induced laziness, transferring music to my phone is a bit of a chore. The thing is when we used to make mix tapes for friends we had to choose albums and tracks and do it in real time, so a ninety minute tape would take you well over two hours make, whereas these days people just want to share a spotifyplaylist.

I find the same with DVDs, I find getting up getting the DVD out, opeing the player drawer and then pressing play a chore. And I always forget about the theft warnings before the video starts. Like is many walks of the life it's the people who keep to the rules who are targetted, not the ones who break the rules. 

Snow, Laziness, Apathy,Lethargy and Ethiopiques

.. and it's cold. Back from Litton, and back to work . This is the part of the year where I thought my walking would take a hit, you can wrap up but sometimes the biting cold and wetness can get to you and you just want to get on a bus or get in and keep warm.

I don't know if it;s an age thing or my natural laziness, but I seem to find it increasingly difficult to do things that need preparation. This can be getting the laptop and mouse out the bag to do a blog post when I'm on holiday. Another is playing a DVD, you have to get up , find the DVD , take it out of the case, switch on the DVD player , tune the TV to the DVD channel, and play the DVD. It's far too easy to take the alternateive route and click a few buttons on the remote and play something on the TIVO, or on demand. Although strangely I still like  playing things on vinyl, and that is very incovenient and labour intensive.

Cooking is similar, I am alwasy tempted to chuck a frozen pizza in the oven, though last night it was mashed normal / sweet potato and bean burger which meant cooking but it was worth it. I still don't do ready meals, although part of that is that ready meals often take as long to cook as it would to prepare from scratch.

I like to be able to walk into a situation and start doing what I want to do, I don't like the preparation , so maybe I'm not lazy , just selective.

I am still hitting my rolling monthly million steps despite the weather, though part of the motivation for that is the fact it helps with keeping my blood sugar under control.

While on holiday I picked up a Best of Ethiopiques album , and I remember listening to some of this music and actually being frightened by it, it was so other worldly atmospheric, but disturbing. I corresponded with Nadine Shah about it, so will include "Yegelle Tezetta" byMulatu Astatke which is a great piece but I find there is a strage menace behind it. Have a great Tuesday everybody.

Blu Rayed and HD'd

Following the demise of our old CRT TV on our return from Dublin , we replaced with a new HD Samsung model , upgrading to a Virgin HD box and getting a Panasonic Blu Ray Media Centre, see here.

While HD is hardly a quantum leap in quality , the Blu Ray player has impressed me as it handles DVD upscaling, DIVX , Music and internet access in it's stride . Most Blu Ray players are in fact media centres which makes watching and sharing stuff extremely easy.