Analog Man Goes Digital

on Sep 02 in Uncategorized by Administrator

In 1983, the year my son was born, I threw away several thousand vinyl LPs and packed the ones I felt I couldn’t really live without in boxes. This summer, 2006, twenty-three years later, I opened them and began to play each one on my turntable, hooked up to an M-audio Firewire 410 digital to anaolog converter, so as to re-introduce into my life in the form of Ipod shuffles.

I’m about 850 songs into it and have found three or four albums that I’d long ago forgotten, but which are really brilliant. Lucky Thirteen, by Bert Jansch, part-time collaborator of John Renbourn and occasional member of Pentangle, Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround by the Kinks, and both the first and second albums by Michael Kamen and the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. The Kinks album is no doubt in print and available on CD, though I doubt Jansch’s or the Rock N Roll Ensemble’s are. I’ve also rediscovered early Leo Kottke, John Fahey, the Reverend Gary Davis, Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band, Brewer & Shipley, Fraser and Debolt, Seals & Crofts (first album, before Summer Sleaze), and Mud Acres, featuring the Traums, and a bunch of other beloved folkies.

In the course of my conversions, I came across two things of value: a box set of the UK releases of all Beatles albums and a white vinyl release of the Beatles White Album. The first I sold on ebay, the second, I’m just going to stare out for a while.