Rant #3,379: We Love You

As regular readers of this Blog well know, I have a massive record collection of some 10,000 pieces.

Also, those same people also know that since my family and I moved to a much smaller residence, I was forced to put my LPs in storage, which pains me, but there is simply no space to keep my albums in our small apartment.

But my singles have come with me.

I have all my 45s in our apartment, and I am having a grand old time digitizing them so I can listen to them in the car.

I could literally go years until I digitized all of my 45s, but I have vowed to try to do so for all 5,000 or so of them.

When I have time, I try to do at lesst one a day, sometimes more if I can.

It eats away a lot of time, keeps me active in between the work i have to do, and it is just a lot of fun to listen to records I, in some cases, probably haven't listened to in decades 

I try to pick records to digitize at random, and sometimes I digitize everything I have of a particular artist, and other times, I do just a few of a particular artist's singles and then I move on to another artist.

Right now, I am on a Rolling Stomes binge.

I have more than two dozen of their singles, stretching from 1965 to just about the present time.

And I have to tell you, it is a lot of fun to rediscover an artist that I haven't listened to in a long time.

Some of the Stones' singles I have digitized over the past 20 years or so, but I found that several of their 45s haven't been put through this process yet, for whatever reason.

Such was the case for one of my favorite singles of theirs, "Dandelion" backed with "We Love You."

I have no idea why I never digitized this single, as I have had this record in my collection for several decades.

So this afternoon, after I did what work I had--a couple of stories to edit--I set about digitizing this record, and some others..

I hadn't heard either song for quite a long time, and it was just so much fun to listen to this single as it was being digitized and turned into an MP3 file.

The single is in decent shape for a 57-year-old record.

Sure, there are nicks and pops, but generally both sides of the record play quite well, and with some other Stones singles that I digitized today--with more to go the next time I have a chance--I can say that it is really a revelation to hear how good these records sound decades after the fact.

The next Rolling Stones single that I have to digitize is "Mixed Emotions" backed with "Fancy Man Blues" from 1989, and I will do it when I have a chance.

In fact, right now, when i am in the car, I am listening to my digitized singles under the letters A, B and C, so we are talking about several hundred singles that I will enjoy listening to while I drive from here to there, all on a single thumb drive.

I won't even come close to listening to all of these during this week, and maybe not even next week, but it is just so much fun to do ... and to me, the real benchmark for whether a record is really any good or not is if it sounds good on your car radio.

If it does, then it is like a real gift of sound.

If not, the song only lasts a few minutes, and then you move on to another one, so there isn't much torture involved.

And for someone who is admittedly tone deaf--I can't sing or play a musical instrument--I always had a pretty good ear for pop music, and my collection is as eclectic as can be.

Through the years, I moved from one method to another to listen to my music in the car, from putting everything on cassette to burning CDs ...

And now, who would have thought that all these years later, I am using the latest technology to listen to all of this--

And in my car yet!

You can describe it in one single word ...

And that word is--

"Satisfaction!"