Amusings

May 12, 2025

I’ve always had a love affair… with music.  

When I was in Kindergarten, I received a clock radio as a Christmas present from my grandfather.  It was absolutely nothing stellar… Just a run-of-the-mill clock radio with the red blocky LED time display.  

Audiophiles would have a coronary if this was the only option available to them.  For me, at age 5, I listened to it with every ounce of my attention.  It captured me.  It was a window into another world.  It was like opening a Pandora’s Box of aural ecstasy.  

I remember being in first grade and having a very intellectual discussion with a classmate… About the attributes of the song “Owner of A Lonely Heart” by the group Yes.  

I remember a feeling of exhilaration from that discussion…  This guy gets it, I thought… Not only has he listened in on this other musical world…  It’s affected him in such a way that not only is he moved by it… He can discuss the merits of it… In a very intellectual, first grade kind of way.

My formative years of music appreciation also included a collection of random LP records most likely purchased from various garage sales.  These beat up LPs very quickly lost their jackets… As well as their audio quality.  The record player that projected the scratchy sounds that tickled my ears would also have been a delight for music enthusiasts… It was light brown in color and had all the hallmarks of low end 1970’s audio engineering.  It resembled a suitcase that (I) would open up to a 90 degree angle… With two (what we would call tweeters today) speakers hidden behind the molded plastic.

Between the mint condition records and a stylus that I’m sure was ground down to a nub, music enthusiasts would probably need professional mental health assistance.

But to me… I thought it sounded beautiful.

And it gave another window to open… Whereas the radio, for the most part, played Top 40 music, LPs gave me a window into history… To music not frequently found on the stations of my clock radio.

To this day… I swear… There was a Ronco record (Yes… the same company that brought you that fantastic hairspray to hide baldness on TV late at night.) that had “Ramblin’ Man” by The Allman Brothers on one side… And “Touch of Grey” by the Grateful Dead on the other side.  There were other songs on the record, but those two songs stuck out to me… I still love those two songs today.  

At age 12, I started working… Agricultural work laws were fairly flexible back then.  And at the end of the summer, I had almost $1000 saved.  That is, until I discovered record stores… Which, by this time, sold mainly cassette tapes.  

By the time I was 16 and driving, there was not much standing in the way between store walls full of music and my hard earned money… And my cassette tape collection grew.

After my freshman year in college, I got a job working in the mailroom at BMG music warehouse.  BMG… You know the place… Their advertisement in the Sunday paper… 8 (at this time) cassettes for the price of one.   

The work was mindless.  A machine would open the envelopes containing the invoice and check from BMG customers.  You would pull out the invoice, and unfold the check, and place it in a neat stack to be collected by the accounting department.  Mindless work.  

But I could do it all while listening to music on my handy dandy Walkman that played cassette tapes.  Listening to music all shift was one perk.  The other perk was that employees were entitled to purchase 4 (by this time) compact discs per week.  

My compact disc collection began.

The following two summers I worked at National Record Mart… Which altered its name to NRM… And was then bought by Waves Music… And then it eventually disappeared into oblivion with the advent of online music streaming. 

It was a typical mall record store mainly stocking Top 40 music… The pop music slant didn’t really interest me much… But helping people find the music they were looking for did.  And its demise was an early sign of the seismic shift happening in the music industry… I wasn’t really paying attention at the time.  

A few years later, while in grad school in New Orleans, I worked at the Virgin Megastore… A gigantic media store in the French Quarter.  Three massive floors of music and books to peruse… I ended up working in loss prevention… Which has its own set of interesting stories…

But, I guess the point is… In one way or another, I have always surrounded myself with music. 

Which brings me to the other day.

Let me back up.

In 2018, I was newly married… And moving into a new house.  And sometimes, when things like this happen, you have ideas of creating something perfect.  And, for me at that time, this included the perfect stereo… Which needed a turntable… For records that I didn’t even own yet.  And so it came to pass… Sort of.

I began buying LP records online… The large mall-type record stores that I had grown up on were now largely a relic of the past.  And by this time, I had whittled my CD collection down to 300 from around 1,000 at its peak.  

What would I buy?  Certainly some of the “classic” albums near and dear to my heart.  But there were other factors.  Is this LP album something that I would listen to all the way through?  This wasn’t the Spotify of today with its instant music changeability.  This entailed carefully removing the LP record from its jacket and placing it on the turntable… And then carefully placing the needle on the record.  This isn’t something you wanted to do every 3 to 5 minutes… You’d get more exercise than enjoyment out of the music.  And so, I purchased approximately 40 new LP records.  And in that time, since 2019, I used that turntable all of about 5 times.  It was a pain in the ass and no one was joining my music appreciation class.

Until the other day.

I now live on my own… And, when moving into my house, I once again wanted to create something perfect.  And so I did.  Two Wi-Fi connected stereo receivers, two sets of prosumer speakers, and two subwoofers… In opposite ends of the house.  I, and possibly some of my neighbors, were now wired for sound.

That was two years ago… And I still didn’t use the turntable.  And then, on a whim, I did.  I started looking through the 40 or so albums that I had largely purchased five years before.  Half of them hadn’t even been removed from the shrinkwrap plastic wrapper.  I was shocked!  My God!  What should I listen to first?  

I chose the album “Idle Moments” by Grant Green.  For the unfamiliar, the title track of the album is a slowly deliberate and beautiful piece that sounds like it belongs on the “Sideways” movie soundtrack.  

And… It was… Perfect.  I didn’t hear all of the cracks and pops that I expected.  The sound was warmer… Not foggy… But more inviting.  I didn’t notice a clarity difference between the LP record sound and the version I had listened to before on music streaming apps.  You could still hear the crackle of saliva on the saxophone reed… Terrible example, but I hope it makes a point.

But there was another thing…

Last month… I listened to Spotify for over 33 hours.  The Spotify DJ told me that… We know each other.

Thirty-three hours of music.  I enjoyed it all I’m sure… But I’m not sure how often I was actually listening to the music.  All of the musical vibrations hit my ears… But, most likely while I was busy doing a myriad of other things.

Listening to an LP record… Forced me to listen to the music.  To really listen… For the first time in a long time.  

So… I guess I eventually created something perfect.