I Love You Suzanne, Part 1: I Say Nothing
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So my lovely wife Suzanne gave me a USB turntable for Christmas. (Also, a Kindle, about which more later on my "other blog":http://brendanhalpin.typepad.com.)This is an awesome gift--it unlocks thousands of songs that have been locked away on all my records since my turntable broke down a couple of years ago. They say that junkies love not just the heroin, but the ritual of cooking it up. I certainly understand the appeal of rituals - this is why I make coffee in a French press, and why, and I know I sound like a fossil here, but for me, vinyl is still the best way to listen to music: grabbing the record, sliding the paper sleeve out of the cardboard sleeve, putting the vinyl on the turntable, and gently placing the needle on the record. (yeah, it's an addiction - there are needles involved).The software that came with the turntable is somewhat cumbersome - record, export .wav file to itunes, convert .wav to mp3, trash .wav file because I don't have space for hundreds of .wav files... - and still I love it. I've decided to start the daunting task of digitizing my vinyl not with the entire albums that need doing - the first Clash album (UK and US Versions, and by the way the US version is better despite what everyone in the world but me thinks), Zen Arcade, Double Nickels on the Dime, Dirty Mind, etc. - but with albums I bought for one or two songs.Tonight we begin with Voice of the Beehive, a band I know next to nothing about except that their song "I Walk the Earth" was a minor hit in the UK when I lived in Scotland in 88-89. When I got back to the US, I picked up their album Let it Bee at a used record store and found it to be full of pop songs nearly as delicious as the "hit" single. Dig this track: "I Say Nothing". It's sumptous pop nugget so sweet it makes my teeth ache.And yeah, you can download it from itunes, but if you do that, you can't get all that fantastic hissing, cracking, and popping that comes with a beloved old slab of vinyl.
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