Back

 

The funny thing about Morecambe Bay is you can watch it day after day but the patterns in the sound vary every time just like a shifting sands picture, familiar bits as you see it from your particular vantage point but other parts different.

The week was largely news free being away for a few days with a massive screen tv that seemed to be locked to Sky News and there's only so many charity and cremation services you can sit through so I just saw a bit on a few days but really the main thing was to just be out letting out my younger side  not unlike a family holiday in the past.

Making things, going on walks, having meals out were really more the thing rather than any "adulting" beyong just looking out for each other.

Retyping the times

All being well there *should* be a issue next week but given I do fully live this life there always will be periods where I am away and they may even be a blog entry short as I need all the spare time I have to actually get everything together to do just that.

I did some secretarial training in the very late 1980's having had various positions which had the benefit of sort of being around youngsters who were having theirs after leaving school ready for the world of work, something it had to be said school really screwed up with me.

So I enjoyed that time as much as it was about real syllabus and examinations for being with people more on my wavelength.

One of the things we did was Typing Skills and Wordprocessing, the latter becoming more and more important for doing personalized letters, and promotional material and back then I was one of the few to be allowed to use the Canon AP850 which was cross between a typewrite with the main functionality set by dedicated buttons on the area near the keys and a cathode ray tube for seeing the text you could alter not just a few lines at a time but whole pages.

The quality of the printing was much better than printers at the time for using traditional ink and characters that were struck.

I got on with this better than a Amstrad Word processsor using Locoscript.

It isn't coming home

For some they went to sleep knowing all about it, for others they woke up to extended news coverage that having lost the World Cup semi finals 2 goals to 1, they would not be in the epic final of the most anticipated Football World Cup in ages.

Having been one up to the final minutes Lautaro Martinez scored the winner as Argentina beat England to reach the World Cup final and no doubt many will feel dejected.

While there will be an awful lot of post match analysis, England had performed very well to had got to that stage and facing Argentina, 2022's winners it was sheer bad lock to had been drawn to play against such tough competition.

My own feeling is England can hold their heads up high for getting as far as they did.

Warm edition

 

It's hot so we're trying to get things done before it gets to frying an egg on the pavement temperatures here having listened to the delayed Now Yearbook Extra for 1972 that arrived the other day so I've updated the main entry on that.

The Beano remains "Last Man Standing" when it comes to the comics we all recall reading or at least seeing friends with them and so while some cartoon series such as Lord Snooty and Friends and Biffo The Bear have gone others such as Ball Boy and the Bash Street Kids remain in the modern glossy full colour version.

Dennis has seen some changes over the year with "The Menace" being dropped, a new back story for Walter and His Dad being developed but he goes back to the early 1950's when it must be said the World was very different.

For those of us of a certain generation this whole strip is so so relatable, everyday objects having other more painful uses, instant, uncompromising adult authority over us from parents, teachers  and other adults.

Equally for all the sophestication around the modern child, that impulsiveness, lack of thinking about consequences still remains. They are for all that children.

Past inspirations

 

Around late July  last year I bought a replacement cartridge on a bit of whim as aspects of those I had were not working out where it mattered - just playing a record and being pulled into the music - and it did prove to be something of a revelation that modest cartridge could leave more involved in the music.

In time I picked up a better model - better by coil layout inside it and better for having an improved borin cantilever holding the stylus and the stylus tip itself was more refined being a nude eliptical.

That. the MP200H, is working out well but as we're getting close to the MP110H's anniversary it is time to consider getting a replacement stylus sorted as where they do last for more than  100-300 hours they don't last forever.

Life when I first got into this in the early 80's was easy and as it happened this October 1980 edition of Popular Hifi a magazine I bought then and this, had the answer.

Page 107 specifically covered the MP15 cartridge but as I mentioned some weeks ago a couple of decades ago the range was renumbered and updated a little and the MP150 as it is know today exists.

It offers a nude eliptical stylus but unlike the Boron of the MP20/200 this uses toughened aluminum for the cantilever and the cartridge body is the same as the MP10/100 and MP11/MP110 designed to work better with aluminum cantilever, controlling any resonances where the 200's was redesigned.

Thus actually I could update it by buying the JP-N 150 stylus used for the MP150 as the body it slots into is the same and it would be "the same" other than the colour of the block you put the screws in to mount it.

You just pull the original forward  to remove it and the push this on until it hits the home position and you're done.

I've ordered on which should be with me in just over a week from a dealer in Japan with Vat charges pre-paid as it was cheaper than over here.

Hot and in the past

Hot, hot, hot!

People through up comparisons, like I lived through 1976 and while that was hot, the felt temperature today is more than what that was then as much as I recall getting burnt legs getting in car after a train trip to Manchester in my so 70's short short trousers that to be honest I was glad of rather than the Jeans of teens back then.

Mum got a right telling off at the start of the 60's for walking to the ambulance to go to maternity but given then we were a bit out of town and to use a modern expression - off grid - what else could you do?

I was on the way as it were when this classic annual came out as annuals are always published the year before as after all you had them for Christmas.

A lot of the mainstays of the classic 60's, 70's and early 80's Dandy were in here such as Winker Watson the best wrangler ever, Korky the Kat, Desperate Dan and Keyhole Kate living very much in the world those of us around during the 60's and 70's recall when adult authority figures roamed and any trangressions dealt with.

Crosswords and quizes complete the collection of comic strips drawn specially for this annual.

Note how the comic strips begin on the covers echoing the comics we bought whereas later on the covers were eye catching themed pieces of art.

It's great to see what the characters were up to and be transported back in that world.

Changing internet landscape

This week as the adults should of decided what's going on in politics for a bit potentially with bye-elections that could alter who the prime minister is and representation in the House of Commons.

One thing we can't ignore is how the changing nature of internet regulation does impact on all from last years Online Safety Act to the proposed ban on social media use by those under 16 and curfews for thos between 16 and 18.

The online safety act placed a requirement on sites and their hosts to require age verification any anything deemed to be not suitable for children which often involved using things like photo id or credit card details to prove you were over 18.

An issue with that is exactly what content that includes as while we'd all agree sexual material definately is are sites that loom at gender and sexual identity issues that have become in recent years a hot topic in schools apart from the wider community the same?

For geographic and often deep rooted cultural reasons some teens cannot discuss such topics at home for fear of being kept in, "made" to be genders and sexualities they are not, undergoing so-called conversion therapies.

To be able to access such information regarding your legal rights facing such situations is invaluable but potentially they could be restricted.

For other groups things connected around say age regression while many of would say categorically we are in no way kink connected and are harmless, for the moment it appears any action depends on your hosts reading of the requirements.

In addition we are not restricted where some other groups that may have more kink connections have either because the host has forced it upon them or sensing the way the wind is blowing they've elected to do it using providers they judge to be the least intrusive and better at keeping your data safe which has been an issue in the past.

Does Youtube need verification adding to some channels or ist that perhaps under sixteens should be locked to Youtube Kids a curated version with addition material relevant for teens on it?

Sporty memories

It's a very wet Summer morning as I type this weeks entry and that damp air bring backs memories such as having to go out in waterproof macs cos school doesn't stop for rain and we'd more than a mile to walk rather than a minute dash.

Then there was the more practical side of things where the much anticpated outdoors games class was suddenly changed for some indoor pe as it was judged too wet or muddy to be undertaking the planned lessons.

With us there was a groan as we loved our football or rounders.

Then we'd always have an informal kick about during lunch recess until afternoon lessons resumed with the ringing of the bell and lining up in pairs by gender, the latter obession was something personally I never got.

We looked rather like these  boys and we loved it.

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 discharge 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.

1983 and all that

Some years remain strong memories with you, others while you are aware of them tend to be much less so and for some of us they are a mish-mash fairly young things and rather more grown up things that you had to deal with the best you could.

In 1983 beyond the more formal presentations to adults you couldn't avoid, feeling tired from masking and generally repressing the authentic you talking around and deal with conversations you had scant interest with such as careers, being expected to have adult "small talk", I cultivated a much younger me building on from the previous years and the issues back then that had brought it all to a head.

See, by 1978 just entering my teenage years I realized I felt nothing like my peers and that brought no satisfaction and it wasn't just a  delay of a year or so, it just wasn't there.

So by 1983 we had the strange situation of wanting to run through parks kicking a ball about, playing with toys, cuddling a teddy with taking your A levels and seeing a Careers Master and suffice to say the way that got handled was messed up as the careers service "lost me" being very late in the day to offer ANY guidance.

it was that which really pushed down a way of thinking of just doing stuff on my own as clearly I couldn't rely on a grown up to so I made all my own arrangements to claim social security to get my N.I. contributions started and get a job which took a while in the Transport Industry.

Socially little changed, I read a mixture of comics and magazines, I watched mainly children's tv shows and even dabbled in a bit of flower decorating as I found great for resetting after a struggle dealing with grown ups.

Breakfast tv started January 17th  which I caught and discussed with schoolfriends as prior to that I just put the radio one for a bit while Top of the Pops and Tomorrow's World remained a must see shows.

The Compact Disc launched in Europe to a big fanfare although it was to be three more years before I bought a player but we did have our very first Now That's What I Call Music compilation lp.

Catalogues and brochures from newly arriving supermarkets came that inspired my outside of work look too.

There was much music I liked back then, Kajagoogoo, Rush, Duran Duran, the Flashdance soundtrack but one towered over all and actually that's a recent specialist edition in even high quality sound than my 1983 original.

I had always liked the Commodores and their lead singer Lionel Richie's voice and this, his second solo album had a great mixture of uptempo funk, slow soul ballads and the most amazing arrangements that still stand up even today.

Songs like All Night Long, Hello, Running With The Night and Penny Lover were events when released as singles with memorible, moving even videos that connected with many people because they were about universal feelings and emotions.

Some like Stuck On You were covered to great effect too.

It's great to own a fantastic sounding version of now to go with my memories of that era.

What matters more - the sound or the music?

In a week where the planet has seemed rather messed up as a space mission went around the whole of the moon today I'm looking the relationship between recorded music and the means of reproducing it

Originally records were made directly from an artist(s) performing in front of a horn with their exact  position altered to get the best possible balence and often replayed by a gramophone via a horn although by the 1930's electronics came in both directions.

The big breakthoughs were in recording on tape after WW2 that made it possible to redo sections and the use of vinyl rather than shallac that allowed for both much lower noise and higher fidelity.

Around the same time slower speeds 45 and 33 1/3 rpm were used that gave longer playtime which helped with longer works and enable an album to be on just a single disc rather than several held together in a stiched heavy duty album.

That really kicked off what today's hifi industry was all about - getting better sound from your recordings  - from the 1950's where it soon joined by stereo discs and tapes adding more realism.

Tape systems improved to allow multiple tracks to be recorded independently and by the end of the 1970's digital recording came in.

What some do say today is the attention is too centred around the equipment to the point a person doesn't play a cd or record listening to the performance so much as they are listening to their system so much so that the quality of recording matters for them more than the performance.

Alan Parsons is a recording engineer and musician who gave us Dark Side of the Moon and The Air That I Breathe.

For me there's a lot of truth in that as performances generally move us more than absolute recorded quality that certainly makes it sound more realistic but that feel is what artists work on in terms of lyrics and muscial composition.

Even if we heard that on portable radio or your smartphone, it would hold your attention. You may have memories of listening to songs on AM Radio which never sounded great but those songs and memories clearly count for something.

Sometimes audio fans would be better adviced to put that record on with drink in a hand and just enjoy the performance.

The look of the past II

After last weeks post well one thing that does come into play is the length and styling of modern day boys or mens shorts specifically sports shorts.

Virtually from the 1970's right though to 1990's the lengths of football shorts, athletic shorts usually of the high cut sort and cotton tennis shorts tended to be short.

For reason's best known to themselves, some suggest as a "prank", a London football club adopted long just on the knee shorts at the start of one season and this became a craze within the Football Association and this filted into shorts for boxing, gym wear and so on.

This has implications when it comes to remaking that look I talked about last week as these almost as long as great great grannies bloomers shorts are everywhere!

There is an answer however and that there are PUMA Unisex Gestrickte Shorts Teamgoal Shorts WMNS which are available from the Puma store on Amazon which aren't branded for women but are worn more more by WSL players in their leagues.

These are quite a bit shorter but still "decent", have the tie to adjust drawstring we all know and go upto 3xl (38 inch) waist.

Worn with say a white or yellow t shirt or polo shirt and ankle socks they do work out well.

The look of the past

You could say the main feature of the week has been the return to winter with fairly cold temperatures, hailstones, drizzle and all of that having been caught out in it so the thicker layers were needed outdoors although I spotted the boys in one area going cross country in their tops and shorts on Wednesday at one school and another in with the gas fire one.

Actually this kind of almost but not quite sailor suit inspired look was very much the thing in the late 1970's as I rebelled against the longs I rather liked and dressed more like  as "going back" became more acccepted at home.

School was different and being in the Marches we did have bi-lingual staff from the Valleys of Glamorganshire who had this wierd fascination in keeping boys in longs, even being a boarding school we'd see their own children in the height of summer fully covered up top to bottom.

Whither it was connected with Methodist inspired notions of displaying working class respectability to the outside world or some other odd idea I don't know but it made little sense to me and I saw less of in England which can be as class conscious and inwardly conservative as anywhere.

I liked that look as much over time I was able to return more to the tailored approach of my junior years and still do.

Happy birthday, Dennis!

It's been a sunny week, a week when low flying bee permitting I've been been out in the park enjoying the sun playing apart from some post birthday things like a belated card coming  and some of the ordered stuff finally arriving evening needing a cancelation from one place and a reording elsewhere!

It was recently another famous boys birthday who also never seems to get older towhich was marked in style by his biggest fan, the comic, The Beano.

He appears to have had a number of famous guests from music and tv apart from everyone in Beanoland for his tenth birthday but actually he first appeared some seventy-five years ago so like some of us he goes around the sun never getting older.

I do wish my joints were what they were but I know the feeling.

Rolling Stones "On Air"

After last weeks birthday excitement we return this week to something connected with that but got put off for several years.

The Rolling Stones were a group I followed although in so far as building a collection of albums went that didn't really take off until my mid to late teens, starting with a couple of compilations and then delving into individual albums.

Their recorded catalogue is split into two halves that recorded and released up to 1969/70 issued on Decca in the UK and owned by Abkco and that after that to date which the group own but license out over fixed period to other companies to press and distribute, currently Polydor Records.

Over the years we've had a number of live albums issued, some live shows from the past but like a good number of British groups they did appear on radio as BBC radio while being notoriously short on "needle time" seldom playing pop records in the early to mid 1960's did favour shows where artists could perform live a few songs at a time such as "Saturday Club".

Some other artists of this era have had their radio recordings issued on cd and record not least the Beatles with two volumes from the 1990's but with the Rolling Stones it wasn't until 2017 that two variants for them came out.

Called On Air, it mixes a whole series of recordings from 1963 through to 1965 where increased demand for world-wide concerts and recording sessions from top BBC Light Programme shows

It's not just valuable for in session versions of studio recorded and issues songs but for a good number that were never recorded at all even if they may of been in their live shows so we get new songs 

Of great interest is a series of songs recorded for an experimental stereo transmission using BBC Radio and TV transmitters for the left and right channel before the introduction of stereo radio on VHF/FM in the late 1960's.

Viewers and listeners were give instruction on how to set their sets up to gain the most from it so while their first two UK lps were in mono only this gives us some early stones in true stereo sounding surprisingly well.

The Beatles covered Chuck Berry's Roll Over, Beethoven on Beatles Second Album (Capitol) and for the UK With The Beatles albums but while the stones did a good number of covers that was one they never recorded in the studio so we get to hear their take on it.

For a variety of reasons I didn't get around to getting this in its two cd deluxe version with a disc of extra tracks so I'm delighted to finally get this set this year.

Pasts in present

Many popular comic strip and film series having started with introducing the adult character after a while starts to give us flashbacks to when they were younger sometimes it must be said to pad out the whole history but othertimes giving us a a glancing to what made them the adults we see.

In real life this is a common concept, often a person may be at some kind of notable event such as at an award, or otherwise taking on a new role and someone involved will refer to his (or her) past linking that to the qualities now required or skills developed over the years.

People do develop. most of us will mature or at least get a bit wiser several trips around the sun.

The thing that often goes missing is the extent to which that younger person remains within the older one now being praised which can show in any number of ways such as continuation in interests, how they see others around the - were you the diplomat or the directly speaking one? - or that you find yourself at times back in that time.

What's so wrong with carrying the Boy around with you?
 

The more things change, the more they remain the same

 

In the ever changing world not least with two unprecidents arrests this week, a bye-election taking place that the governing Labour Party might loose as I type this and yet another BBC "clanger" this time over the BAFTA coverage somethings just don't change that much.

At the demarcation line where two settlements merged rapidally in the late 1960's into one lump in a conurbation of lots settlements for miles, the shop units that served one remain, repurposed from Newsagents and Corner Store where as a lad I'd go for paraffin and firelighters and pick up the Warlord to Offlicence and General store and Hairdressers (they do cut boys hair too).

The windows have been renewed apart from two that had been bricked up at Bargain Booze and the interiors totally revamped which is a leap of faith given the current trading conditions  but all is more or less as it's been from the late Victorian period.

That in less than two minutes you have the essentials at hand is just great here and in extra three you have Post Office and two pubs.

Meet The Beatles - last copy!

End of week, one more week left in the month and we are back with what might be the last part in the Beatles story where it began for the United States with what was the first issued album and unlike in the UK Stereo and mono copies were available immediately as the United States had a higher take up of stereo systems than the UK.

Pop records in the U.K. were generally the province of teenagers with shoe box mono portable record players.

It was common place to cut pop records with more an eye to avoiding any issues with cheap equipment with returns to shops and that tended to show with less "top" and limited bass and this was very much the case in the United States so cheap players wouldn't skip the groove.

As time went on, the records would be recut to higher standards but what was on your record was  often a matter of what "Stampers" somebody in the pressing plant "pulled" when more discs needed pressing.

By the late 1970's overall you'd stand a chance of getting an okay copy, okay compared with the U.K. With The Beatles but not that great.

That's where this, the last recut version comes in as by now fair more detail had made it so it was cleaner than any previous version just as the Beatles were to come to Compact Disc with titles from the UK catalogue

The front cover was based on the UK With The Beatles cover with a bluey tint becoming black towards the end with the title bodly showing at the top so it could be spotted easily in the shop record racks at a distance.

The rear cover was an attempt to explain by way of an essay who and where these "Beatles" came from and talks about their upcoming appearence on the must see Ed Sullivan popular entertainment show on CBS Tv.

I have had a number of copies over the decades, from a early 80's Purple label one to 2024's mono reissue but this is the 1986 edition that was only out for about 18 months at the most from the last new cutting.

The iconic "Rainbow Rim" label returned with the text newly typeset which was common feature of many 80's Capitol releases.

This copy sounds as good as it can, featuring the the new single and it's U.K .and U.S.  b sides which for some of takes us more back to those times than the british With The Beatles album regardless of that albums technical superiority.

February round up

My right side is playing up so I'm strapped up and resting a bit, at least physically as there's some family stuff that's been on my mind over the last few weeks that's been hard to escape from.

That's nothing new, I mean there's always been stuff that shall we say seemed more intense that that of your mates from way back in the day with everything being played to the max.

I have been listening to a few cds the old transport took issue with apart from that 12" single compilation  from 1986 I wrote about on the other blog this week and I suspect that when part II comes out will be the cut off point as by then I was focused more on albums and especially building a cd collection having got s player then.

I have played a couple of the latest reissue classical lps in a series I have being buying - not blindly collecting in full - where the performances were one's I've always loved but where with them due to when I first got them I never had them on vinyl so having newly remixed from the original masters versions is great and to go with one I bough a few months ago I've tracked down a later recording with a different orchestra of otherworks that I only part of on a early cd to go with it as much as I'd love to see that reissued.

I enjoyed reading this months AdventureMaxPlus magazine

Respinning the Compact Discs II

Way back around November 2024 I wrote an entry around a series of changes to the hifi as it had changed radically in several years thinking that would be pretty much the end of that for a while but something happened.

Issues started to develop with the cd player, never one for playing recordable cds, around 40 to 60% of my super audio cds with hybrid regular cd layers just refused to be recognized and play, spitting them out and those that did seemed to have audible errors on the first track.

Then to top the lot it was fussy about the slightest mark or finger print on regular cds, skipping tracks so it needed to go.

Pity.

I bought this SMSL half sized transport from someone unused as due to financial issues having just got it they needed to raise cash quick that had been on my list of potential upgrades in the future.

One aspect of it took me back to my first cd player a Toshiba  and that was it loads from the top with no slots or draw mechanisms with a magnetic puck you put on top or more accurately two, a larger one forming part of the lid.

It's a bit more basic on the display just track number and time information and if you wish to use the USB socket  but it spins very quickly on anything finding all the tracks accurately.

There are a choice of outputs, the newer I squared S, AES/EBU XLR, coaxial which is my default and optical which the lead to the minidisc portable was put in.

It works really quite well once you relearn how to get the disc out using the recesses the grip the disc with the edges of your fingers having removed the puck.

I did reorganize the shelf to make it a bit neater and stack the mini size components in a more functionally related way while I was at it.

45 rpm attachment

 There are a good five boxes of singles around my bedroom that go back to the early 1970's and cutting off around 1992 of the old vinyl wrap lockable sort even if a good many have songs that are on lp albums or cds in my collection.

There are a few select ones from the 1960's that I picked up over time, some that were played with early compilations of hits often containing original mono mixes that are otherwise hard to find but generally they're the hits of a time I really loved.

In the earliest years you had to effectively lodge an appeal for someone, usually Mum to buy you one although my copy of Jeepster by T Rex I had for Xmas 1971 has been missing for a while surviving a couple of house moves but as time went buy I had pocket money that I saved towards things like that such as my stash of Bay City Rollers singles or were bought at things like birthdays like my copy of Elvis Costello's Oliver's Army.

You could say they reason they're still here is actually down to the memories attached to each one played as the earliest were three in rotation on a autochanger before you flipped the pile over for their b sides with friends to those like Charles and Eddie's Would I Lie To You that were played a side at a time on my hifi set up before I got around to picking up the cd of the album it was taken from.

Memories these days count for such a lot.

Thoughts before cornflakes

 

Normality of sorts resumed last week with Blue Peter resuming on Friday while I have also been also enjoying like a good many The Traitors, so popular there was even a series of cartoons across copies of the Beano referencing it quite openly but with the anarchic beano take you'd expect.

I avoid politics like the plague here (and on our forum) but I think all of us have been knocked for six to use a cricketing metaphor by how events involving the President of the United States and other Nato countries have turned out although though there appears - for now in this crazy world at least - a bit of a step back from the brink that was as bad as anything we went through during the Cold War.

I do wish to turn to matters that do directly affect all of us to address a topic that is causing some concern and that is around messaging be it emails or messaging on sites.

Please, Please, Please do wait for a response before shooting off volleys of messages even within minutes of each other because we need to firstly have to time to fully read them as everybody has lives beyond their computers and sites.

We may look after people, be dealing with episodes of ill health ourselves, need to do banking, shopping and possibly have a social life even so you just cannot expect us to be immediately available to look into things, responding fully straight off the bat.

It only leads to increasing frustration as you think you have worked out the answer only to find even more things in other emails or messages and so you have to start all over again.

Please consider fully what you wish to say - make a note even before typing - and put it in a single, ideally structured message and wait for us to respond.

Until next week, bye.