You Spin Me 'Round Like a Record

I recieved an early birthday present from my biological father Bruce on Thursday. My CD player/stereo finally gave up the ghost about a month ago, and we'd discussed my getting one of those Victrola-type consoles, with a CD player, tape deck, and record player built into the set. I'd wanted one for years, but never had the money and had heard that the CD players on most old-time sets tended to break easily.

Bruce found a set with a front-loading cassette player and CD player (most have one, the other, or both loading on the sides), and that's the one he surprised me with on Thursday morning. But that was only half of the surprise.

I was even more shocked when he brought out two boxes of records that belonged my late stepmother, Bruce's wife Kaye, and said he was giving them to me. Kaye was a sweet woman and always good to Rose and me when we saw her, and the few memories I have of her are fond ones. Kaye was a huge fan of the 20s, 30s, and 40s, and many of the albums were radio recordings or recordings from the era - especially of Humphery Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bette Davis, and/or Shirley Temple.

The majority of the albums, though, dated from the mid-60s to the early 80s. The range of Kaye's collecting surprised me. She never struck me as a country girl, but had four John Denver albums (the most of any one artist) along with Neil Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Crystal Gale. She also didn't look like a disco type...but more than a quarter of the albums were definately disco, including the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack and albums by Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, and KC and the Sunshine Band.

I was a bit surprised there wasn't more jazz. Maybe those were harder to find in the 70s and 80s. There was nothing made after 1981, either, despite record production continuing for another decade. She was a successful graphic artist when Bruce married her in the mid-80s. Maybe she got too busy for record-collecting after '81, or maybe the music of the MTV era didn't hold the same interest that the music of the previous decades did.

It's a wonderful and facinating collection, though, and even though most of the albums are avalible on CD, I'm glad to have them. I've missed records. Yeah, tapes last longer and CDs run longer...but there's just something about a record. Tapes and CDs don't have that wonderful musky smell that vinyl does, they're not as much fun to set up, and you can't watch most of them go around and around and around, somehow producing the magic of music from a bunch of plastic grooves and a needle. : 0 )

Oh, and Kaye, wherever you are now...thank you. : 0 D