Two discs and some memories

Sometimes an object ceases to be about just it but everything that was around it, times, events and people and for me two records, technically superceeded, come in to that category.

Music when I was very young eminated from a three foot piece of wood called a Radiogram which was literally a radio and record player all in bigish console, occupying the second most important space in our first house to the 19 inch black and white television which could get a grainy BBC 2 given the state of UHF transmission back then.

In the UK unlike the US the Beach Boys were not has bins, no longer hip in world of San Francisco hipper bands like Country Joe and the Fish, the Doors and naturally the Jefferson Airplane but respected by their UK pop peers, able to sustain large concert audiences.

Because of how things went, not least when Pet Sounds, lauded over here just didn't make much of impression over there, Capitol Records decided the best thing was to resell old hits issueing The Beach of the Beach Boys.

The UK issued it but with substancially different track list, that told more of the development of their sound and at that point a number of earlier albums hadn't been released.

This was the record my Aunt had and was borrowed by my parents the odd time which taped which is where I first heard it in its tiny white box holding a three inch reel.

I grew up learning to thread tape so liking music of various sorts I could play the tape all by myself as I read comics and played.

It had hits and the off "deep" album track. It reach the #2 for a massive 142 weeks on the UK album charts in November 1966.

As things had hardly improved in the States, a second volume was prepared and the UK issued another varient which like the previous album had some 14 tracks.

It was issued in "stereo" too but back then stereo also included fake stereo and our version had two mono tracks for good measure.

This one also made its way to our radio gram and was taped.

This offered a few early singles and some more recent singles such as Wouldn't It Be Nice, the number one smash Good Vibrations and Then I Kissed Her from 1967

These albums remained on catalogue unto the late 1970's gaining different label designs from the 1969 black One Box with the capitol logo in a box with the EMI logo at the bottom, a  1970 Lime Green target design and Salmon Pink mid 70's.

Over the years and two house moves those tapes came with us and as I was able to get money I replaced them with original records because being sat playing them took me back to my earliest days.

Enter the MP200

It has been a hot week here but one thing I did was add a better quality cartridge to the record deck apart from making sure some much played discs were straight to avoid any heat based issues as this house soon gets like an oven.

Some product have a very short in production life, lasting some 12 to 18 months before being replaced or at times more accurately rebranded with a new number and a minor change, others perhaps a hands worth of year and yet tiny number seem to have been around for well eons.

When it comes to the Cartridges for my Marantz turntable that is very true as the keen eyed will spot in this 1981 advertisment a number that still are in production, revised in the late 2000's and renumbered by sticking an extra zero at the end of the model number.

When you consider the principals that make records have been around since Berliner at the end of the nineteenth century,  adjusted for "microgrooves" in 1949 and stereo in 1957/8 well you might say what is new when it comes to cartridges beyond a few attempts to "read" the groove optically that haven't really caught on?

Thus if you look at that 1981 add from when I was in the Lower Sixth and spot the MP20 actually what I ended up getting this week was the slightly improved modern version, the MP200 in its "H" version.

The "H" standing for the premounted in a headshell version so I don't gnarl my paws mounting it myself, turning screws.

That's a neater job that I'd of managed!

What you get is a better set of coils to convert the "wobbly" actions of the groove into sound revealing more of the finer timbre of instruments and the use of a less resonant material, boron, for the cantilever that holds and transmits the modulations from the stylus to the coils.

This means you can for instance follow much more of the bass and lead guitar riffs on my eary 80's UK A Hard Day's Night album by the Beatles and the vocals sound very realistic - as if you were in the studio.

Great over forty odd years ago remains great today with subtle improvements along the way while the stylus remains easy to change pull off the original and push on the new unlike moving coil designs that need to be changed by the manufacture or "swapped" under a discount scheme for a new whole cartridge.

To my ears moving iron designs get very close to them with considerable advantages like fuss free stylus changes when they get worn, like you can do it yourself in minutes.

Every 1981 model remains available today in improved forms for a reason: they are all great acrosss a wide variety of music and record decks, the more you spend the more fine detail and sense of spaciousness you can experience from your record collection, new and old.

Magazines and offers

It isn't as I type this quite as warm as had been forecast not that that doesn't put me off going and out and doing things as we all wedre as many modern youngsters cue up to to say to they were inspired to as they read about and reenacted being soldiers, playing war games, or emulating our footballing heroes, practising in all conditions.

As it was rare for school to be closed we just had to be resilient coming in in snow and heavy rain.

Later on as moved more into just being my more child-like self self I followed the manga and animes of Narato.

The series follows Naruto Uzumaki as a teenage ninja striving to protect his village and achieve his dream of becoming Hokage, the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village. 

With over 250 million copies of the Naruto manga sold worldwide and Naruto Shippuden running for over a decade, the series has become a cornerstone of anime culture praised for its action, complex characters, and emotional depth. 

Naruto Shippuden’s themes of redemption, sacrifice, and perseverance explore how the bonds of friendship can defeat the most powerful enemies and that was really what appealed to me.

Magazines and comics were always a thing with me and often had ads for others by the same publishers and with some it seemed few payed the Newsstand price always being on a reduction.

It was rare over here to see "Bill me later" offers but I dare say some of us might, like Calvin, might of had a field day filling in such cards and then at some point having the letters demanding payment we'd need to show our parents at which point all hell would break loose!

These days you can have this with "In game" purchases where you might of thought having got the game for your child that was it but not anymore and if you left your bank details in... you can work out how that would pan out!

Musical lessons

The long suffering paws haven't been great this week - over use I guess - but between rubbing myself down and changing after being out Wednesday and looking at a few photographs that emerged thoughts went backwards.

I can't read sheet music - nor can Paul McCartney - but I did play a few instruments at school and did quite a bit of the recording of school performances at the time but I would certainly of preferred to be dressed as he was in the Fourth and Fifth Forms than how we were.

Static electricity causes all sorts of issues from a potential fire hazard in baking and wood products factories as dust spontenously combusts to being an irritate in playing vinyl records where it may dischage to the phono cartridge with a loud click.

Apart from cleaning your record which can help, using a carbon fibre mat that fits over the platter helps as the carbon picks up the ground from the deck and helps conduct away any charge.

Hama does a 2mm thickness one which works well and can be got from most suppliers.

More Dennis, what?

Yes it's Friday, sadly Crackerjack didn't return after Covid but we do have Blue Peter still but going back to all of that of course is boyhood memories not least our favourite comic characters be they Winker Watson, Little Plum or of course Dennis.

Dennis this year is celebrating 75 years of being ten which is being marked in different ways and recently a special was produced combining more recent Dennis stories feature obviously the wonder dog himself Gnasher by Nigel Auchterlounie and Nigel Parkinson. 

Storylines always follow childhood as it is today and there's getting away from the fact it's different in terms of what children eat - we gorged on fish fingers and mousses - we played more outside and with board games and they have smartphones and games consoles and school is very different (and in some respects a safer place for children.

Dennis even can cook which back the then he's of taken the mickey out of Walter (the Softie) for although there's always a another agenda with him.

This is 68 pages of modern menacing fun available from DC Thomson's website, Amazon, TJ Hughes or any decent newsagent.

Telly

In the main it's been a warm week excepting Wednesday which naturally I was out in, sticking post-its to the letterbox for the mail and assorted couriers.

Television it must be said isn't a major thing with me.

I mean there people who watch from the crack of dawn to bedtime, plowing through box sets and three or four part continuious re-runs or sorts who just click through channels trying to find something.

My tv habits were formed in childhood and they tended to be just a few shows between other things like playing or as I got old between sessions playing records although radio as in daytime or weekend end show or a weekday concerts.

Televisions themselves have changed since then.

The big box with the rear of it's tube neck sticking out behind its back has been replaced by lcd displays that are much thinnner and totally flat with improvements  in geometry as those of you had those early 32" widescreen cathode ray tubes in the 90's might well remember.

Back then the dvd player and early digital tv gave us better actual widescream programming where today we have blue ray and for some very high defination streaming.

Well recently our Panasonic 32" set died - power supply issue affecting the lcd drivers - so we got a Sharp Aqua which is fairly plain set with a few streaming apps because one issue with streaming and their apps is the apps themselves go out of date after several years so your "smart" tv loses that where a set with good connectivity enables you to fit new devices as needed extending the sets life.

When and if satellite and terrestorial tv via an antenna ends no one has determined as yet although it's no secret broadcasters and transmitter owners want to get shut of this  moving everyone on streaming even if internet may be poor or non existant in parts of the UK.

Thus I feel connectivity matters more today.

1986 and all that jazz

1986 was three years on from leaving school, changing posts but at least in terms of outlook no different from them, hardly in mid teens mentally just masking along trying to impersonate a grown up with a lack of conviction.

That much had stuck me the year before staying in a guest house struggling between wanting to play on the beach which I found relaxing and going around museums which I do like - always did as a kid - but not all day.

One couple expressed the thought I was lost. Oddly enough that couple from Dudley just about got it as really nothing really connected to me how others thought you "should be" and keep a bit of an eye on me at least.

I preferred things as they had been, sat reading the Beano while everyone else watch the politics on the tv missing not being able to play with action figures as I still watch mainly childrens tv.

The big news musically was in 1986 I got a cd player although the discs were twice as expensive as my records so it took a while to build up any really decent collection and some recording took ages to come out in that form. 

For much of the mid to late 80's you couldn't get any RCA 70's Bowie for instance so I ended up still buying a lot of releases on record,

Jazz was secret like of mine borrowing recordings from the library and playing some of Dad's albums when he was out so I did get a couple of compilations from the Tandy store on compact disc.

It also helped the Aristocats soundtrack was very much jazz based.

Really they were samplers by other labels being a bit short at around three quarters of an hour but with some great performances recorded digitally but not too expensive.

You loaded them in the player and shut the lid which caused it to run for a few seconds, find all the tracks and wait for to press play.

I slowly started building a Queen collection as their albums outside of Greatest Hits and The Works came out on cd and bought Notorious, that years Duran Duran on cd.

I began to realize I needed to be me more.