A little (or long) preamble before getting to the Song Of The Day/Week/Month/Time Period To Be Determined.
I have a massive library of music, 90% of which is in the superior sounding vinyl format. What I don't have anymore, except for the speakers, is the Cam Ollson Audio System (COAS, or as my buddies used to call it, "Cam's Ass"!) to play the vinyl on. COAS was dismantled and sold off in the mid 1990's when our oldest son Doni was a toddler, who took great joy in running the tonearm across the platter mat both when a record was playing and when one was not. All efforts to protect the system were in vain, so I fell on my sword and sold it and never replaced it. As with all young families, one gets caught up in the whole father thing and "active" listening opportunites would have been scarce anyway. Instead of spending a portion of my (okay, "ours", dear!) disposable income on high end audio gear, I/we spent it on diapers and toys and every damn Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures and Disney video ever made! Is it wrong to want Winnie The Pooh swarmed by those honey bees and stung to death?
(Hang with me here, I'm getting to the point soon!)
As the family CD collection grew and the boys got older, I managed to find some time for listening to music, usually while surfing on the computer. Like most people, we could fill a junk drawer with MP3 players. A couple of years ago I caved and purchased a Canadian Napster subscription. I could download all the music I wanted and it could be put on up to three MP3 players and would remain working as long as you subscribed and as long as you connected the MP3 player and refreshed it every 30 days. You could also buy the music and it would be yours forever. Sooooo...Elena and the boys had access to all the music they could want for their MP3 players and I could listen for hours while attached to the computer. It was all good, although if you read between the lines above, you'll see that your's truly was Number Four in a service that allowed the connection of Three MP3 players. Then, as often happens with those things that are too good to be true, Napster was purchased and the new owners decided not to offer their service in Canada. Yikes!
This effectively rendered their MP3 players useless as our CD library doesn't encompass the current music that the kids are listening to and the current music that Elena is listening to as well. I of course, am a dinosaur and listen to very little new music. But more about that in a later "Street Beef".
We decided that the best course of action was to go where no Ollson had gone before: iTunes. Elena and the boys have been enjoying iTunes since Christmas 2011. I just recently got on board when I retired my stoneage (2007) Sony MP3 cell phone and received an iPhone as a birthday present.
So, with a $50.00 iTunes card in hand, I started looking for songs for sale that I could only previously listen to in less than hi-fi on YouTube. And I struck gold with my first try!
Today's song is "Letter To A Fanzine" by Great Plains. Answering the eternal question of "Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?" First discovered this on a great compilation album in the late '80's called "The Wailing Ultimate". A collection of artists and their songs from Homestead Records. Great stuff! I encourage you to check it out. And let me know what you think of it!
Thanks for listening, and I encourage you to check back soon!
