You know you are getting old when:

[Lean'n'mean]

During the 60's my parents listened to Johnny Ray & Peggy Lee so I was obliged to widen my horizons & seek musical solace elsewhere. ....by the late 70's, Johnny Mathis had entered their lives which was a sign it was time for me to leave home.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I guess, Status Quo's "In the army now" was the final change to my way of hearing music, when I was 14 in 1998. It got me really and I wanted to hear it more than one time. I think, at this moment and this sound, something changed in my mind.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's the atmosphere and I still like the older cassette-sound.

I feel the same way about 78rpm records. Bad experiences with "rechanneled from monophonic for stereo effect" LP reissues left me unsatisified. Nuts to vinyl -- give me shellac.

 

[Fading Fast]

I feel the same way about 78rpm records. Bad experiences with "rechanneled from monophonic for stereo effect" LP reissues left me unsatisified. Nuts to vinyl -- give me shellac.

There is something digitizing does to music that changes it. Maybe it's for the better or not - I'm not an audio expert, but it sounds different to me and I prefer the vinyl records I grew up with just as I prefer older speaker to the newer ones. And I am talking about apples-to-apples. To my ear, an original vinyl recording of "Exiled on Main Street" has a richer, warmer, more natural sound versus a "digitally remastered" one on CD

It might simply be that I like what I "learned" to listen to music on - vinyl, old speakers, etc., and that one isn't better (or maybe digital is better and I'm too much of a philistine to appreciate it). I never liked audio tapes, but you don't have to be an expert to notice the loss of range, the tape hiss, etc. to not like them (or at least the cheap plastic ones they sold in the 80s and 90s, before CDs took over).

CDs were a meaningful uptick from tapes - but that wasn't a hard rabbit to pull out of the hat. But CDs versus vinyl is, IMHO, the difference between proficiency and soul. There is a high clarity to digital, but to my ear, some range, some warmth, some "something" is different and better in quality analog. But, as noted, it might all just be me liking what I grew up with and not having the "skill level" to appreciate that digital is better in some way.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Got someone of you David Bowie's "Low" still on Vinyl?? I got the 1999's remaster-CD.

 

[BobHufford]

When the small town newspaper historical display features a Macintosh Classic.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ or the fact that kids today think email is "your father's Oldsmobile." You must text, chat, snap, blah, blah, blah - email is so "old school."

Oh, for God's sake.

 

[HudsonHawk]

There is something digitizing does to music that changes it. Maybe it's for the better or not - I'm not an audio expert, but it sounds different to me and I prefer the vinyl records I grew up with just as I prefer older speaker to the newer ones. And I am talking about apples-to-apples. To my ear, an original vinyl recording of "Exiled on Main Street" has a richer, warmer, more natural sound versus a "digitally remastered" one on CD.

I mostly listen to digital music now, just because it's so convenient. But when I put on side 1 of the old vinyl copy of Let it Bleed, and I hear the opening guitar riff to "Gimme Shelter", it gives me chills.

 

[Fading Fast]

I mostly listen to digital music now, just because it's so convenient. But when I put on side 1 of the old vinyl copy of Let it Bleed, and I hear the opening guitar riff to "Gimme Shelter", it gives me chills.

For full disclosure, I, too, listen to mostly digital for its incredibly convenience. But like you, nothing touches as deep into my soul as a vinyl recording on a great sound system.

"Let it Bleed" is an outstanding album as is "Gimme Shelter" a song. "GS" has always felt like the musical embodiment of the '60's pain, war, agony, disillusionment, angst, writhing - it's all just one tremendous scream of fear.

 

[HudsonHawk]

"Let it Bleed" is an outstanding album as is "Gimme Shelter" a song. "GS" has always felt like the musical embodiment of the '60's pain, war, agony, disillusionment, angst, writhing - it's all just one tremendous scream of fear.

Interesting how you view that record and that song. My friend Brian once wrote a different take on it:

"People are forever seeking inner peace; and they’ll climb to the mountaintop, move to the desert, blast themselves out and up amongst the stars, trying to find it. And good luck to them, too. It is just that some of us found out you don’t have to go very far to find inner peace. Sometimes it comes with the simplest details, in the most mundane surroundings. Not a breathtaking vista in the Himalayas, not the austere, terrible beauty in the heart of the Sahara… sometimes you can find your peace right where you live, in the smallest events, in the simplest details. I shiver at the beginning of “Gimme Shelter” because Keith Richards playing lead guitar on one of the best songs ever written brings to me a profound feeling of well-being and peace, right there on my 10 x 10 deck in my small backyard in the wild West End, Beaumont, TX, USA, Planet Earth, Milky Way, Universe, 77706. I don’t need Sherpas or a Land Rover or a Saturn 5 rocket to find it. Just a couple of nine-packs of Miller Lite and the second of four straight *bleeping* awesome LPs by the greatest band of them all. And my neighbor Ted. That’s it.

They say you can see God in the tiniest details. I am not going to say you cannot. But, if so, maybe God sees us in the tiniest details, too. Ponder that over your next nine-pack, while listening to the Stones, in your backyard, with your neighbor. Then tell me if I am right or I am wrong."

 

[Fading Fast]

Interesting how you view that record and that song. My friend Brian once wrote a different take on it:

"People are forever seeking inner peace; and they’ll climb to the mountaintop, move to the desert, blast themselves out and up amongst the stars, trying to find it. And good luck to them, too. It is just that some of us found out you don’t have to go very far to find inner peace. Sometimes it comes with the simplest details, in the most mundane surroundings. Not a breathtaking vista in the Himalayas, not the austere, terrible beauty in the heart of the Sahara… sometimes you can find your peace right where you live, in the smallest events, in the simplest details. I shiver at the beginning of “Gimme Shelter” because Keith Richards playing lead guitar on one of the best songs ever written brings to me a profound feeling of well-being and peace, right there on my 10 x 10 deck in my small backyard in the wild West End, Beaumont, TX, USA, Planet Earth, Milky Way, Universe, 77706. I don’t need Sherpas or a Land Rover or a Saturn 5 rocket to find it. Just a couple of nine-packs of Miller Lite and the second of four straight *bleeping* awesome LPs by the greatest band of them all. And my neighbor Ted. That’s it.

They say you can see God in the tiniest details. I am not going to say you cannot. But, if so, maybe God sees us in the tiniest details, too. Ponder that over your next nine-pack, while listening to the Stones, in your backyard, with your neighbor. Then tell me if I am right or I am wrong."

Well our views are not as far apart as they seem in that while I absolutely see "Gimme Shelter" as a cry of the heart from all that seemed spiraling out of control in the sixties, the song does move me in a positive way. Not so much because the song is of hope - it isn't - but because the music and lyrics themselves are so artistically beautiful - so brilliant, so moving - that there is humanity in it that contrasts with the chaos it describes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

During the 60's my parents listened to Johnny Ray & Peggy Lee so I was obliged to widen my horizons & seek musical solace elsewhere. ....by the late 70's, Johnny Mathis had entered their lives which was a sign it was time for me to leave home.

Johnny Ray was considered a punchline even in 1950. But Peggy Lee made some quality records with Benny Goodman -- she wasn't the best singer he ever had, Helen Ward was, but neither was she a mickey-mouser.

 

[tonyb]

A cartoon in The New Yorker shows two fellows looking over a high-end audio setup (tube amp, turntable, etc.) owned by one of them, who says "what I like most about vinyl is the inconvenience and the expense."

Me, I got a Yamaha turntable in my console stereo, where the original (glitchy) one had resided. And I got an Onkyo tuner/amp and a Kenwood CD changer and a pair of late '60s/early '70s Wharfdales and a couple of those circular "end table" Pioneer speakers of about the same vintage. I freely admit the console and the old speakers are here mostly for their looks, although the audiophile friends assure me the Wharfdales and the Onkyo are the good stuff. (The cognoscenti turn up their noses at the Pioneers, but that's fine by me. They're in great shape, and they look really cool.)

Got the console from the original owner (a paper label on the back panel shows his name and that of the retailer; how that business has changed, eh?) and the Wharfdales from the brother of the original owner, who had purchased them in Hong Kong while on a break from that little dustup in Vietnam. (The original owner had died in a car wreck not long after returning home, his brother informed me.) I drove about 50 miles each way to procure the Pioneers. The amp was, like, 40 or 50 bucks, and the CD changer was maybe 20 bucks at a thrift shop.

Like anyone should care, right?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The radio in my living room, a 1937 Philco with a dual 6F6 pentode push-pull output stage, cost me five dollars back in 1984. At one-half volume it makes the walls shake, which is why I listen to it at rarely more than one-quarter volume. Add an early-40s Philco tabletop turntable attachment and you've got a 78rpm sound system for the ages. Plus full AM radio coverage from 540 kc to 21 mc for pulling in those late night broadcasts from Radio Havana Cuba.

 

[Stearmen]

I was standing in line at UPS when an attractive blonde in front of me cracked a good joke, "lunch hour and only one clerk, not like they would expect a crowd!" I laughed, then I notices her blue jacket and the silver star on each shoulder, I thought good for her. This evening I had to laugh, if you went back in time say 40 years and told a younger me, "someday you will find a General attractive," well, I probably would have dotted your eye! I guise I really have come a long way baby!

 

[GHT]

The radio in my living room, a 1937 Philco with a dual 6F6 pentode push-pull output stage, cost me five dollars back in 1984. At one-half volume it makes the walls shake, which is why I listen to it at rarely more than one-quarter volume. Add an early-40s Philco tabletop turntable attachment and you've got a 78rpm sound system for the ages. Plus full AM radio coverage from 540 kc to 21 mc for pulling in those late night broadcasts from Radio Havana Cuba.

My Grandmother gave us her 1932 Ferguson wireless, they weren't called radios back then, it's valve driven, works perfectly and like your Philco, it puts Ghetto Blasters to shame.

 

[DNO]

When the small town newspaper historical display features a Macintosh Classic.

Never mind the small town display... I was in the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa about 5 years ago and I could point out all the computers that I once used to my son, from the Commodore PET and the C64 to the 486. Yikes! I even mentioned how excited we were when the Pentium came out...but there was one of the those in the display as well.

 

[DNO]

I found a beautiful 1949 302 rotary phone in a thrift shop just before Christmas. While I was examining it, the young lady behind the counter mentioned that she had no idea how to use one of those phones. So I showed her...she was unimpressed with the technology. Yeah...I'm starting to feel old. (And to top it all off, I had a particularly stupid moment and didn't buy the phone. D'oh!)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Go back and get it. Everybody should have at least one phone that doesn't depend on the cell system for emergency communication. And tell the youngster those dials were one of the first successful "digital" systems - the number dialed was simply a pattern of switches clicking "on" and "off."

 

[GHT]

I found a beautiful 1949 302 rotary phone in a thrift shop just before Christmas. While I was examining it, the young lady behind the counter mentioned that she had no idea how to use one of those phones. So I showed her...she was unimpressed with the technology. Yeah...I'm starting to feel old. (And to top it all off, I had a particularly stupid moment and didn't buy the phone. D'oh!)

My first phone is still in use today. Why change it when it gives good use? I do have it hooked to a modern phone so that I have touch tone technology. You can't see incoming calls on the old phone and therefore you can't filter out the canvassing calls. I do keep the modern phone out of sight though.