An Exercise in Nostalgia

This posting is apropos of nothing, and entirely unrelated to any of the nominal topics of this blog, or even the surrogate topics that occur seasonally. Such as all the recent posts about the Syracuse Orange, Wes Johnson et al. But as I'm the sole author of the blog, with unlimited discretion about what to publish, allow me to tell you about what's been taking up my time of late:

I recently acquired a turntable with a digital output. For the techies among you, it's an Audio Technica model whatever whatever, with a USB plug. It came with a couple software programs, and the one that works with Susan's MacBook is Audacity. It's a bit complicated to install, and we needed John's expertise to get it up and running. But once installed, it's pretty easy to use. Put the LP on the turntable; start recording; export the digital file as an MP3; and then copy to ITunes. That's it. Once copied into ITunes, the songs can be downloaded to the IPod; and then incorporated into playlists; all the usual stuff.

So for the past couple weeks, I've not only been making digital recordings of all these old LPs, but have been revisiting my teenage years in the process. I went through all the old Lovin Spoonful albums, all of which I had bought when in high school, and compiled a Greatest Hits thing. Then I went through the old Stones albums, I mean the really old ones, and pulled a few gems out -- stuff that didn't quite make it to the CD collections. Susan and I had saved some 45s from way back in the day, and we even recorded the best of the 45s, scratches and all.

Today, I went through three Dave Van Ronk albums, most of which I hadn't heard for more than two decades. In college, Van Ronk was playing pretty much all the time, in one room or another in my fraternity. And even though we had seen Van Ronk a couple years before he died, and even though we listened to him endlessly all through college, somehow I seemed to forget how good he was. His voice; his phrasing; his wonderful guitar playing. How many hours did I spend listening to Dave Van Ronk? And why hadn't I figured out some way to listen to him in the past twenty years? I mean, why didn't I get any CDs? Anyway, once I finish with the other albums, I'm making one playlist from all his albums, and then I'm planning to sprinkle his songs through all the other playlists.

I've got tons more to do - the Dylan bootleg albums; Mississippi John Hurt; Jimmy Smith singing Hoochie Coochie Man; the Fugs. Once I'm done, I feel like I'll have a soundtrack to my youth. And in the process, it's great fun revisiting those old days.