Radio Erehwon

My two children, one twenty-six and the other twenty-one, have heard me use the expression 'like a broken record' their whole lives. Unlike many of their friends and peers, they know what it means and what it's in reference to.

Before they were born, I worked (way too strong a word. I'd have done it for free-that people paid me to do it was the icing on the cake) as a radio announcer/music director/interviewer/spot recorder/librarian/music editor/reader card writer, and every other job in radio you could possibly have. I worked everything from 5,000 watt daytime AM stations to major market FM operations. I love radio--before and after everything else I have ever done for a living, I love radio. It is as close to magic and alchemy as is possible for one person to get and the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

Of course, my favorite thing about radio was and is always the music. We have a huge collection of music in my house, on compact disc, on mp3, on audio cassette on 8-track cartridge (I even have in the basement an 8 track recorder and player) as well as open reel (and no, I have no open reel player) and vinyl singles, extended play and long player records. I think the last time I checked, I know own four different turntables, because you never know when you might need one.

And while we have many hundreds of different musics in different formats, I have over seven thousand vinyl albums. Everything I own is alphabetically listed (and in chronological order) by name of performer (or group). Don't try to split hairs with me. "Jethro Tull" is is under "J" for Jethro and not "T" for Tull; The Beatles, The Kinks and The Rolling Stones are under "B", K, and "R", respectively.

I bought a turntable that went into my PC about a year ago, under the theory that I would transfer only my favorites (who could afford the CD's otherwise) from my vinyl collection but the number of steps involved and the amount of work, and the meager payoff (I goobered up three tracks for every one I got right) led me to quit my quest.

This past Christmas in a department store my wife found an all-in-one combo that claimed to be able to do all the heavy lifting and got it for me. It's a lovely cabinet--sadly, to cut costs, the turntable is a worm-gear (my least favorite type), but (and it's a great but!) there's an auxiliary input that allows me to use my component system, complete with a Pioneer direct-drive turntable that my son got repaired for me years ago at Radio Shack with an advanced circuit in the CD recorder that marks more than two seconds of silence as a separate track.

The impetus for all of this came from two different albums in my life and in meeting their CD reincarnations years later. In the early eighties, Neue Deutsche Welle, NDW, was sweeping West Germany and in the forefront of what was basically very peppy and poppy dance music was Stefan Remmlar and Trio. They had a huge hit with "I don't love you/you don't love me" (tell me this is NOT magic). I had the chance to interview him one night on a radio show I hosted across Europe and we talked for hours--he was brilliant and the listeners loved him.

Fast forward less than a year--in Ian Hunter's band is a brilliant musician, Martin Briley. As a side project, basically a "Waiting for Ian to get into the studio" filler, he has recorded an album, One Night with a Stranger that has the greatest top five hit single, The Salt in my Tears, to NEVER make the top 100. I have no idea what happened--it was spectacular and went plywood in Indiana.

Not that long ago, I was wandering through a mall record shop and I found a CD of Trio's debut Herz Ist Trumpf on sale for 'only $32.50'. I paid less than fourteen marks for it on vinyl two and half decades ago (and the exchange rate was about two mark and twenty pfennig to a dollar) so to suggest this offering was slightly overpriced was slightly understated. That very night, I went on line looking for the Martin Briley debut but finding only a repackage at $125.00 (American dollars? I shouted.) You betcha. Two reasons to grow my own.

It's a lot of fun but it has its heartaches--because of the technology at the time, the best sounding albums had no more than nineteen minutes of music a side on them--do I need to tell you how hard it is to find forty minute CDs? And if, as I so often do (or did), decide to 'add' another artist's effort to the CD, how would you file this stuff? A couple of weeks ago I bumped Steve Forbert's Jackrabbit Slim (with Romeo's Tune) and decided I could add Carolyne Mas (who was better at evoking Springsteen than Bruce was. I really should pass her music along to LR and Adam, so maybe that can be my project this week). Except when I have all this together, is it 'F' for Forbert or 'M' for Mas.

I decided on 'G' for the Glory of Rock and Roll. I'm surprised at how many entries I have at that letter. And they all sound great.
-bill kenny