by Rick Rorapaugh
I gave myself a Philips Audio CD Recorder for Christmas last year. I like it a lot;
it sounds great and has two decks, though curiously enough I can't open or close either one with the remote control, which seems a bit odd.
I bought it because I was spending about 100 Swedish crowns ($10 US) each for CD's and was
still unable to find the music I liked in most retail outlets. Much current music leaves me cold, and they didn't have a wide selection of blues, world music,
thirties and forties pop (to name some genres I like) to choose from otherwise. The guys at the used CD shops got to know me well, but their inventory varied widely from
week to week. Even used CD's still cost at least
fifty crowns and that adds up after a while. However, blank audio CD's cost about 15 crowns ($1.50) each, and I can find all sorts of music at our local library. They
have a great selection of genres and, I can sample whatever strikes my fancy free of charge. It made sense to take the money I was
pending on disks and purchase a recorder instead. I check out half a dozen CD's at a time, listen to them at my leisure, and if I decide to make one part
of my permanent collection, I copy it as is, prune away or re-sequence tracks, make compilations or whatever. What a godsend for the semi-serious (400-odd CD's, several hundred
LP's, a bunch of homemade cassettes) collector like myself.
It's probably illegal to do this, of course. The "Instructions For Use" manual makes that quite clear, in twelve languages no less. "Note: In certain countries including the UK and certain Commonwealth countries, use of the product (or CD Recorder) as shown or suggested in the user manual may (emphasis mine) require the permission of copyright holders." Well, I follow the advice a former boss once gave me. "It's easier", she said, "to ask for forgiveness than permission." So, if any of you out there has objections to my burning CD's, consider yourself asked. Forgive me. Please. Now here is some music I hope you like. Enjoy.
It's probably illegal to do this, of course. The "Instructions For Use" manual makes that quite clear, in twelve languages no less. "Note: In certain countries including the UK and certain Commonwealth countries, use of the product (or CD Recorder) as shown or suggested in the user manual may (emphasis mine) require the permission of copyright holders." Well, I follow the advice a former boss once gave me. "It's easier", she said, "to ask for forgiveness than permission." So, if any of you out there has objections to my burning CD's, consider yourself asked. Forgive me. Please. Now here is some music I hope you like. Enjoy.
First up is the intro to Concrete Jungle (673 kB) the opening cut to Catch A Fire, a 1973 release from Bob Marley and the Wailers. I included this because it just comes out of nowhere in a very un-reggae-like way with that etherial organ line and illustrates just how good a band these guys were. They had been playing together for years by this time and it shows. I went through a Marley phrase after reading about his earlier albums in Aftonbladet, and I went down to the library and checked out all the Marley CD's they had. Two each fit very nicely on an 80 minute audio CD-R.
Next are a couple cuts from a recent discovery, the blues giant Mississippi Fred McDowell. Fred do not play no rock 'n roll. He do not have to. The man can make his guitar say whatever he wants it to and that's good enough for me. A spoken introduction (732 kB) followed by Kokomo (888 kB).
Robert Crumb is the best known of the so-called "underground" cartoonists, but few know of his love for obscure and arcane 78 RPM recordings. The band he helped found, The Cheap Suit Serenaders, have put out a couple of CD's of covers and odd-ball originals, and he has also released some compilations from his massive 78 collection. "Gay Life In Dikanka" contains ethnic recordings from the late '20's and 1930's, mostly European but also some of North American and African origin as well. This one, followed by Kinnekulle (567 kB) is a Swedish schottis, or dance tune, waxed in 1928 by Hjälmar Peterssons Hobo Orchestra.
Finally, a couple of classic stylists. Fred Astaire sings On The Beam (813 kB), an little gem from the 1940's. Check out the drug references. Should we give this one a Parental Advisory-Explicit Lyrics label? And Bryan Ferry (1,19 mB) shows us he just wasn't made for these times.
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