5 posts tagged “music”

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I miss the magic

May 16, 2009
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A few weeks ago I started using Spotify and soon discovered that a lot of progressive rock that I'd never been able to get hold of was available on there. Box of Frogs, for example. I never knew about the band at the time they were recording and only came across the name years later in the Rough Guide to Rock. Out of curiosity I put their name in the Search box, and up came both of their albums. Now, they're not great albums, but at least now I've heard them for myself.

A lot of my old vinyl is stored up in the loft where I can't easily get at it, so finding that a lot of it is now available on Spotify is fantastic, not least because in a lot of cases the sound quality is way better than my old records.

But getting access to all this old stuff set me thinking. When I first started collecting records, when I was around 12 or 13 in 67/68, they were all 12" LPs and part of the excitement was looking at the covers. A 12" square is a good size for an artist to really do justice to album art. One thing that really disappointed me when CDs took over was that 5.5" x 4.75" is really not big enough to show detailed artwork. And lot of the time the text is so small that I can't read the sleeve notes or lyrics without a magnifying glass. And now even that it likely to disappear, as music moves into the era of the download. Somehow, the magic has gone for me with the passing of album artwork.

THIS is music

Apr 22, 2008
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This is the sort of music I was grooving to in my teens. And I'm glad to see Mr W is back to playing in that style again, like Traffic at its very best, but now with Eric Clapton thrown in for good measure. Listen to the long version at http://www.stevewinwood.com/

QotD: My First Single

Nov 14, 2007
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Music-wise, what was the first 45, single or download you bought?
Submitted by Paddy Melt Wagon.

Marrakesh Express by Crosby, Stills and Nash was technically the first 45 I bought, although I also bought 'Come With Me' by The Idle Race (Jeff Lynne's first band) at the same time. I think I only ever bought about half a dozen singles as I thought they were a waste of money, but I was so excited when my dad finally bought a radiogram that actually played 45s and 33 & 1/3 RPM records as well as 78s that I went out and bought two singles in a fit of madness.