Hello. Welcome to my user page.
I was born and raised in Lewistown in central Pennsylvania. I now live in Clementon in southern New Jersey.
I am a bit of an audiophile. Here is a history of my musical interests:
- Popular: From birth to '86. Then popular music changed to something I didn't recognize, so I went back in time...
- Oldies: '86 to '90. At which point I became bored. I wanted something new and fresh. Then I watched an awards show where Bonnie Raite's CD "Nick of Time" beat, in four categories, a CD which I had recently gotten : Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever". I then got the Bonnie Raite CD. That brought on my interest in...
- Country: '90 to '95. I got married in Dec '94. I then went to my wife's preference...
- 70's music: '95 to '02. Then my wife and I watched American Idol. When Kelly Clarkson won, I thought I should again check out...
- Popular: '03 to present, I still like popular music, but my dad's passing in March 2007 made me realize my own mortality. So I added...
- Christian Contemporary: '07 to present. Along the way I also picked up an interest in...
- Classic/Opera music with a modern sound: Artists such as Bond, Celtic Women and Sarah Brightman.
I still love my 45RPMs and LPs, but there's nothing like the portability of CDs. Imagine trying to carry a record player around on your back. Just kidding. I haven't gotten an iPod type device... yet, mainly because I currently do not have a working computer at home.
With the advances in technology and recording media has come the demise of vinyl records, replaced by CDs which in turn are being replaced by iPod devices. Though recently I've read somewhere that vinyl records are making a bit of a comeback due to better sound quality. It seems CDs can't capture all the sound of older recordings.
What I like about vinyl as opposed to CDs are the actual record label designs. Some of the record label designs of the past are really works of art. These days, most CDs just have printing of one color on a silver background. Boring and unimaginative. Computer game CD ROMs and Movie disks have better interesting and colorful labels.
Examples of the more interesting label designs from the past:
- The red and black Atlantic label.
- The '60s orange and yellow swirl Capitol label. (The 80's version for The Knack was a little rough due to the smaller label size. Apparently, they just couldn't get the smooth borders separating the colors.)
- The UNI label (Neil Diamond, Seals & Croft) Gold bottom half with 5 different colored swirls (inside to out) across the top half.
- The '70s M.G.M. label (C.W. McCall "Convoy", Sammy Davis Jr. "Candy Man" , The Osmonds) Blue with a gold comet swirl across the top with a round lion head logo at the head of the comet.
- The '70s A&M label with the large A M letters forming an incomplete ring around the label. I remember the first one I got was The Police "Roxanne". I used a pencil to complete the ring at the top and bottom, joining the A to the M.
And last, but definitely NOT least:
- The MOTOWN label with the top quarter showing a map and red star marking Detroit. For some reason, I always thought Detroit was on the Lake Michigan side of the state. I recently looked up the Wikipedia Detroit article and confirmed the red star on the label's map IS in the correct location. Detroit is located on the river between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.
The label designs are why I'm so fascinated with Wikipedia's Record Label articles. In addition to interesting info about the record label companies, some also have images of label designs and logos. Especially interesting works of art are the labels from the early 1900s, 78 RPM labels.
I recently got a compilation CD by Ace Records "Early Girls Volume 5." The booklet has pictures and notes about each track and images of the actual record labels, both public and promotional.
It's interesting to note that some of the promotional 45s had a small center hole, but also had cutout perforations so the center could be removed to make the larger hole. This would've been a great idea for the public versions as well. If your player didn't have a 45 adapter, you could use the record with the center and small hole intact. However, if your player was like my first one, an RCA 45 RPM record player with the 45 RPM size spindle and turntable base as one piece (it was passed down from my father), you could simply punch out the center of the record and it's ready. I hated seeing records with small holes, knowing I couldn't use them!
It was 1970 when I got my first multi-speed record player. It was a Sound Design model that had a removable 45 spindle and speeds *78, 45, 33 1/3 and 16 RPM; an AM/FMST tuner which my dad hooked up to the TV cable for reception of many stations outside the Lewistown area and an 8 Track Tape player. *Speed that I never used.
The only time I used that 16 RPM speed was for a 12" product instructional record that my father brought home from work. It was a one-sided clear flexi disk glued to a cardboard picture of the product. Dad thought I would be interested to see what the 16 speed was used for. I listened to part of it a couple times, but got bored fast.
Anyway, back to the different sized center holes. I wonder who decided to give 45RPMs a larger hole. There must have been a reason back then, but now it seams odd that they wouldn't have just kept the small hole that had always been used for 78s and LPs. I mean, why make people and companies adapt to the larger hole?
My guess is that the larger hole was to tell people that this record is the "new" 45RPM format and will not play properly on equipment that does not have the 45RPM speed.
I'll add more later, but I just had to write this first.