Tag Archives: Vinyl

Tower Records, Dublin

The Diary of a Slow Traveller

I have fond memories of spending a delightful afternoon thumbing through CDs at one of the Tower Record stores in San Fransisco back in the 90s while my jet lagged family were asleep. I’d also spent time in the HMV store in Singapore and London, thumbing through the racks of CDs.

I particularly remember the Singapore store as I’d spent a whole afternoon there in preference to seeing Singapore’s sights. When I caught up with my colleagues they were somewhat bemused by how I’d spent my afternoon. But in 2017 these were all distant memories.

So what has this got to do with our trip to the UK. Well, it has been one of my laments that the joy of thumbing through racks of CDs is a thing of the past,  so it was with absolute joy that I spent a delightful hour at Tower Records in Dublin.

We’d booked a tour in The Little Museum of Dublin  for early afternoon, as the morning tours were booked out and so we thought we’d visit Trinity College to see the Book of Kells in the interim. When we arrived to purchase our tickets for The Book of Kells we found that it was on timed entry and that our slot was just before our scheduled Little Museum of Dublin tour. As a result we had an hour or so to kill.

As we’d walked to Trinity College to purchase our tickets, I’d seen the Tower Records store which was conveniently located directly opposite a large bookstore where my favourite person would be happy to browse. I left her there and headed straight across the road to Tower Records.

I suspect as I walked in, my eyes were the size of saucers. It’s enormous and not only did it have racks of CDs to thumb through but racks and racks of Vinyl. My morning was made as I browsed new releases and then walked upstairs where there was even more Vinyl. It was like stepping back in time and I was loving it. Continue reading

Alice’s Restaurant

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If you haven’t ever listened to or haven’t recently listened to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant, I suggest  make yourself a coffee, sit down and listen to it.

While I owned the record, I hadn’t listened to it for many years until it just appeared on a Spotify playlist I selected. Within a fraction of a second of it starting I knew exactly that it was Alice’s Restaurant and more scarily I  knew every word just as though I’d only heard it the day before. It had been a regular at our Friday night singalongs in the 70s.

I thankfully was too young to be in the Vietnam Draft but knew many who were either in the Conscription ballots or were called up to serve in Vietnam, so its significance is one I understood all too well.

As the song progressed I stopped what I was doing to listen again as I ‘d done so many times before, first chuckling internally and then just laughing out aloud. And there was plenty of time to do this as its more than 18 minutes long! Too long to fit on a 45 it filled  the whole of a side on an LP (Released 1967). It’s hilarious while at the same time having a pretty hard edge.

If you haven’t listened to it and want too click on the link – Alice’s Restaurant before reading on as there are spoilers below. Continue reading

It’s Record Store Day 2016

Record Store Day

 

I received a message from Pandora and saw a post on Guardian Sleeve Notes  that it was Record Store Day. How ironic that over the last few weeks I have started frequenting record stores again.

A couple of weeks ago I got my turntable and old amp out and starting playing some records (yes real vinyl). Some stuff I hadn’t listened to for years – Fragile by Yes, Indian Summer – Al Stewart Live, and an old Australian compilation Trax to name just a few. It was like opening a time capsule.

I have hundreds of records spanning from my first purchase of Abbey Road to my last made just a couple of weeks ago Accoustic by Joni Mitchell. It used to be a ritual starting in the late sixties going into the local record store Continue reading

Well that’s done but it couldn’t have been done without the music or The future is Streaming!

20,000 words, an exam and oral presentation and this academic year is done! Maybe just as significant is the amount of music listened too.

Day after day, Spotify has continued to provide a seemingly endless stream of music, supported by Pandora and my substantial iTunes library.

Through this year many of my posts have highlighted a new love of country, a revisiting of Dylan, and how music has been an integral part of my day.

I have since my late primary school days had an insatiable desire to buy Singles, LPs, and CDs. That is until now.

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My purchasing habit led to a brief foray into importing records. For a couple of years a close friend of mine and I started to import records for our friends, less for profit and more to bring down the price of our own purchases. It lasted until the local post office told us that we would be considered a business if we continued,

Continue reading