Rant #2,632: Music, Music, Music

How was your weekend?
 
Mine was OK, punctuated by several naps, an occurrence which is becoming more the norm for me as I get older.
 
I am getting more and more like my father every day, and he used to take naps all the time.
 
I feel that I need them to stay awake, if you get my drift, as without them, I just feel like I am dragging, in particular on the weekend.
 
And since this weekend was WWE Wrestlemania weekend, I dozed off several times during the two days of festivities, plus the Hall of Fame show.
 
There is never a dull moment during Wrestlemania, but I guess I created my own dull moments by conking out here and there during the broadcasts.
 
Kind of strange, but so goes life for this semi-retired guy.
 
In between the naps I try to keep myself busy, and other than whatever work I have to do, I often keep busy by digitizing my record collection.
 
It is an endless exercise, because I have so many records to put into the digital format so I can listen to these records in the car, but it is fun to the max for me, allowing me to listen to 45s and LPs that I haven’t listened to in eons.
 
I create projects for myself, and I just go with those projects until they are completed.

 
One project that I recently completed was an audio paean to the old ABC-TV show “Where the Action Is.” I run a Facebook site called “Where the Action Is: Yesterday and Today” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/598790963991601/?modal=false&should_open_composer=false&hoisted_section_header_type=notifications) and I thought I would put together some tracks that were featured on the old 1965 to 1967 show, a Dick Clark-produced program that continues to have wide popularity as one of the few showcases for rock and roll acts on network television at the time.
 
I have written about this show before at this Blog, most recently in Rant No. 2,605 (March 4, 2021), and some of the popularity of the show has to do with the fact that it remains an enigma because of its scarcity.
 
Even with this scarcity, YouTube has a number of clips and a couple of full shows of WTAI that area available, so I thought it would be fun to gather up some of the audio from these clips and mix them with actual digitized music from my collection to make a WTAI music project for members of this site, which currently totals well more than 1,000.
 
It took me a few weeks to gather everything up, but I did just that, and I put all of it up on SendSpace at https://www.sendspace.com/filegroup/MsdgM6Xs1gdkJcLS%2BTsPXZoH%2BfUziPyHN4g67vwKkNOZDB6%2BM6m%2FHp6Z%2FmTR0meh8uiKPl1fDlDktH3RFyBgWvKlqHBkE5FF33UIt8Wl7JMDv5j2fFqQeg6f5Ser3ceSfofHX9JhRXOBsuXp38bDOfvKSQf5G%2F%2BqovuRkIQmdlHuT66uOLiXW2ZtzTBHBP6JDoYeVES6%2B9bp%2B2bNvIM656O6KnEMBvty8irwlxTkXl%2BvKuvD7yPlLBvblHa824f%2FxDRxKn9jljyxYwxN7vqclPNVVpHgbDeO1xexAC2bv05n%2Fx%2B6rdZfKkkqqUP%2B9%2Bkggv6P%2FjVepKNfrDfG5lR9lz4haz3GNsVWjTceQzvnQWMRzDYu6T9wbvKPDcYXvaFvSbekF90CMZDWqYLeulmJzQ?fbclid=IwAR0ecDlFXPD74hYxRa0_M1EW35EivZ_i_FbMcYmBQFRN10510Wayg6nBl_E
 
However, unbeknownst to me, unless you know how to maneuver SendSpace, you will have a problem gathering the files, something I did not know at first.
 
But after some people told me that they were having problems with it, I further investigated, and if you simply bypass the first advertising board that pops up, interested parties should be able to access everything pretty cleanly.
 
I went into the site several times and did it myself to verify exactly what I was saying, and evidently not only didn’t I have a problem, but others didn’t either, so once you know the “trick”—which took me about two seconds to figure out—then the rest is gravy.
 
Anyway, that project took up some of my time, and I am happy that some people found it to be as much fun as I did.
 
And you know what--after seeing the musical acts featured on Wrestlemania, is there no wonder that there is so much interest in the music of the past?
 
The music that is featured during the annual Wrestlemania broadcasts always tries to tap into what is happening in the musical landscape of today, and if, in fact, that is what it attempts to do, and attempted to do once again this year, then I must be a real old fogey, because the supposed “music” I heard on this show was nothing but trash.
 
Among the performers was Bad Bunny and Bebe Rexha, and if this is what music is today, then please, please, please give me Paul Revere and the Raiders and Dino, Desi and Billy.

 
(Although I must say that Rexha can actually sing, has a great voice, and has a smashing figure, which she showed off during Wrestlemania—and which you can see right here--making the National Anthem something that any patriotic American would stand up to in an instant.)
 
Anyway, digitizing music eats up a lot of time, and I find it to be lots of fun.
 
As the great former WWE wrestler Mark Henry used to say, “This is what I do!” and as a semi-retired worker who was put out to pasture way too soon, I have to fill in the gaps with something, so why not this?
 
Digitizing my records has become a hobby within a hobby, and one of the few gratifying things about being semi-retired is that I now have the time to do things like this, fun things that I didn’t have the time to do when I was working full time.
 
And it is all fun, which makes it even better.