Balloons and beavers and record players

I have a fondness for old vinyl album covers - there's just something about them that a CD cover or (God forbid) an mp3 album artwork file cannot capture. I'm usually not one for "holding the music in my hand" but I will admit to loving the feel of a 12" record album in my hand. Perhaps it's because I had so many of them when I was growing up. I bought vinyl long after it was on it's way out - the last vinyl album I bought new was Bananarama's The Greatest Hits Collection in late 1988 - and even then, I'd gone almost exclusively to cassette tapes. Christmas of 1988 saw the arrival of the CD player so who in the hell needed vinyl?

I've turned a lot of the vinyl albums I have into artwork in my home office (see the post "Vinyl trim") but that's left me with a lot of vinyl albums that I can't play. Usually this is no big whoop as most everything I have on vinyl I have on iTunes. But for some reason, I've really had a hankering recently to get a record player and play some of those vinyl albums. I haven't had a record player in 20 years and although vinyl's making a comeback, I just could never justify the expense of buying a turntable to be able to play records again.

Yesterday we went down to Indianola where our friend Jeff was hosting a party for the National Balloon Classic. He has a front row seat to the Mass Ascension of the balloons. The whole thing sounds vaguely religious to me, but trust me, with the company we were keeping, it was as irreverent as ever. Last year was highlighted by the presence of the Beaver Balloon.

Attack of the killer beaver!!

This year, the Beaver Balloon was back, but it turned it's back on us. You can see it in this photo - it's the lowest balloon about 2/3rds of the way across the picture.


That's right, we were snubbed by the beaver (ironically enough, also the title of my college memoirs.) As we said, if there are any beaver jokes that are not inappropriate, we're not interested in knowing them.

But more than that, Jeff was having a garage sale of sorts - selling stuff he had painted as well as some of his personal belongings. One of those was a complete stereo system WITH TURNTABLE (and speakers) for a lousy 20 bucks. I hemmed and hawed as per my usual and then ultimately purchased it after he assured me that the turntable still worked. I set it up today and have not turned on iTunes all night. Here I sit with 21,000 songs in iTunes and I'm happy as a clam to be sitting listening to record albums, just like I did 30 years ago. No, the sound isn't like it is from a CD or an mp3, but there's just something about it.

Click to make it bigger! It's Stevie Nicks!

I've also listened to Barbra Streisand's Stoney End and it's just made me more determined then ever to get more Barbra vinyl. If nothing else, I need to get the People album and probably Simply Streisand which are both albums I had on CD in college, in addition to Stoney End. Jeez, having had all those albums in college, it's not surprising no girls wanted to date me! (not really true, but boy I sure couldn't see through the fog of self-doubt and low self-esteem enough to see it.) It's truly amazing my wife said yes when I asked her to marry me.

Barbra crimped her hair and went down the stoney end. She never wanted to go down the stoney end!

There's something about vinyl, especially the really old albums, that just seems so right. The acquisition of the turntable for the rock bottom price of twenty bucks makes me want to head to ZZZ Records in Des Moines and see if I can score some Joni Mitchell vinyl, or Laura Nyro's Eli & The Thirteenth Confession. As I've said before, if there's an album that begs to be played on vinyl, it's that one.

So everything old is new again. The only thing I wish it did is keep track of play counts. I guess you can't win 'em all. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll listen to some Bananarama. ON VINYL.

Raised on R

So tonight, I was looking for the Joni Mitchell song "Raised on Robbery" in my iTunes. It is one of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs - seriously, those of you who dismiss Joni as just a flaky folk singer from the 60s know not what you do. Anyway, I typed in "raised on r" into the search box, which was far more than I needed to type to find it, and not only did it bring up "Raised on Robbery", it also brought up something a bit unexpected.

I am no Journey fan by any stretch of the imagination, and it just goes to show how little I cull my iTunes that this entire album is still taking up space on my hard drive. Clearly, I am an archivist afraid to delete anything on the off chance that I might want to listen to it sometime 22 years from now.

Now I say I'm no Journey fan, and if that is true, why have I listened to "Girl Can't Help It" 25 times? That's twice as much as I have listened to "Raised on Robbery"! Well, "Girl Can't Help It" snuck its way onto my favorites playlist (all 5 star rated songs) a while back and, what can I say? Truthfully though, Raised on Radio isn't THAT bad of Journey album. It's definitely more of the same from them, and the well was starting to run dry, especially since it's one of the last Journey records with Steve Perry. I think I have that vinyl somewhere, but I don't think it's worthy to go up on the vinyl wall of fame.

Journey is at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand this year, playing a double bill with Heart. I was tempted, mostly because of Heart, but ultimately decided against it because $45 is a lot of a show at the State Fair and also because I'm not that big of a Journey fan.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it, even though while writing this post, I have listened to nearly half of Raised on Radio.

Autumn non sequitir

It is a cool, dreary, rainy autumn day in Iowa. I have to work in an hour but have had a full day already. Part of the morning I helped out at Anna's school where the 4 kids in Anna's reading group got to go to the library to start a research project on an animal they don't know a lot about. Anna is researching wolves. Their job was to write 4 questions that they'd like answered about their animals, and then the teacher is going to write 4 more. I had to discourage one of the kids from asking the question "How do lions kiss?" by gently telling him that the questions had to be something that they'd be able to answer. He swore that he saw a picture of lions kissing in the book he was using, but we couldn't find it so he changed it to something else. Then I was off to an appointment and then back to the house where there was no shortage of things to do - laundry to be folded, dishes to be washed, a mattress to be flipped, etc.

I'm a mere three days from Sticky & Sweet and I'm excited to be going. It should be fun even though it is going to be expensive. There's no way around it and mostly, the money has already been spent so I am not going to allow myself to sit and worry about it and wreck what promises to be a hell of a lot of fun. It is odd to be going to a Madonna show so late in the year. All of the other tours have ended long before October, so this is a new experience for us. I may actually have to wear a coat! And there's a 20% chance of flurries on Sunday! Strangeness. Added to the fun this time around is Yuri who is flying to Chicago tomorrow to join us on Sunday. He has not seen a Madonna concert since Blond Ambition, and (as Jeff and I have said) we'll try not to hate him for having been at Blond Ambition. I'm sure there will be no commentary on the blog about this weekend at all.

It will be fun, there's no doubt. But what I really need is a week off to do nothing. However, I fear even that might not be enough.

I have been watching this documentary on Joni Mitchell on Netflix watch-it-now. I've been watching it kind of in segments as it's been hard to find time to sit down and watch it, plus the whole watching it at the computer is kind of a pain. Anyway, 2008 will probably be the year I truly discovered Joni Mitchell and I have been meaning to blog about her for months. It just hasn't happened for a thousand different reasons. What I will say is that "Stay In Touch", a latter-day Joni Mitchell song from the Taming the Tiger album, fell into my life at just the right time and it keeps on being relevant. I keep on coming back to it. It fits my life right now in more ways than I can count.

Also, apropos of nothing, I'm growing my beard a bit longer as my Halloween costume requires sideburns and I refuse to buy the ones that stick on. It is itchy. And I feel very Grizzly Adams, even though it is a few millimeters long.

And with that, I am off to work. Sticky & Sweet or bust.

(autumn leaves via)