thirty three and one third

I've been on a good old nostalgia trip this morning, digitising some old records that I'd trawled out from under the dust. There's some real hum-dingers in this collection, and I'm hoping they're Mrs Delphwynd's and not mines. Lena Martell... The Goombay Dance Band??!!

I bought an old turntable off of Ebay and am using that connected to the computer to convert the music using Audacity. That nice bit of free software also has a built in hiss, pop and crackle filter that makes a decent stab at removing the tell-tale signs of a needle on vinyl. But then again, maybe that's part of the charm and character that's missing from CD and MP3.

The kids had great fun playing with the turntable. They had never seen one before up close and it was funny watching them getting to grips with lo-tech hi-fi.

"What side goes up?"... "Why is there two different speeds?"... "How do you skip tracks?"... "What, you have to turn the thing over yourself?"... "Why does it all take so long to start?'.

This record I know is one of Samantha's - Chartbusters 82 by Ronco. As well as making a number of indispensable kitchen utensils in the 70s, they, along with the likes of K-TEL were the forerunners to all these NOW... CD compilations that are around now. Apparently, in order to squeeze enough tracks into the 45 minutes or so available they would fade many of the longer songs out early. This record here has a whopping fifteen tracks on it. Wohoo! The rather eclectic track listing for this classic piece of vinyl is as follows:

SIDE 1:

Give Me Back My Heart - Dollar
Love Plus One - Haircut 100
Ooh Shooby Doo Doo Lang - Aneka
Have You Ever Been in Love - Leo Sayer
Head Over Heels - Abba
I Ran - Flock of Seagulls
I Could Be Happy - Altered Images

SIDE 2:

Mickey - Toni Basil
It AIn't What You Do, It's The Way That You Do It - The Fun Boy Three with Bananarama
Ball and Chain - XTC
Warmed Over kisses (Left Over Love) - Dave Edmunds
Will You Love Me Tomorrow/Stand By Me - Panama
Theme From Hill Street Blues - Paul Lorenzo
Your Honour - Pluto
Tottenham, Tottenham - Tottenham F.A. Cup Final Squad with Chas and Dave (I did say it was eclectic!)

Now, where's Volume 2...