{~} MÜZIK : CS2CD part deux {~}

Two years ago I started re-classifying and sifting through my record collection and I decided to _really_ solve the problem with my old Fisher amp, which had one of its elements burned so that only the right side of the speaker would play when i would switch to the turntable. In 1994, that was a major bummer (as i would say then) because most of my record collection was on vinyl.

Fortunately and thanks to a brilliant cousin who can work just about anything electric (he resurrected an old Sony auto-reverse walkman) that problem was solved and i plugged my sound system to my computer to convert my vinyl collection into mp3 files, in early 2004. So far so good... however, the cassettes, which i still have in large quanity, did not migrate so well on the iMac as my vinyl. So I decided to make a call to anyone who had the same albums as i had, but in CD format instead of CS (cassette) and i uploaded a .rtf file where i listed the cassettes I have so that people could make their own checklist and see if anything matched.

Thus far i have (re)covered half of my cassette collection, although only five people have helped me out since that time. The reason i managed to convert to mp3s most of my collection is thanks to the opening of the Grande Bibliothèque, where i have access to literally thousands of CDs for free, which i rip with iTunes, and i have a downloading program that allows me to get some of the records that are absent from the humongus collection at GBduQ.

So where do I stand after two years? Well, judge by yourself, I still have all those records on tape to find a CD or mp3 equivalent. I know that some of those I will NEVER be able to find a digital equivalent, such as the PEKING BROTHERS, Taiwanese singer/actress Wu Qian Lian or old demos that friends gave me years ago, but at least I am making some progress. For example, I never thought I would find on the net a copy of Enjoy! by the Descendents or Evol by Sonic Youth, both of which were starting to show sign of phonic decomposition... But for some, like Gaye Bykers on Acid or The Big F, two years of diligent search on the download engine still has not proven fruitful. Either they are impossible to download and I will have to re-buy them (like i did for an old unfindable Blind Idiot God Tape), or i will reluctantly try yet another trick to convert the signal in mp3.

For those of you who are going bazooka over the above statement that I download music for free, I must warn you that i actually BOUGHT the cassette with my own money, money that was hard-earn must i add (i was mowing the lawns of, like, 6 people as a teenager) and during the time the artist/musicians were alive and/or active... So i have no qualms in downloading music off the Internet for free, since I would be ripping it on my iTunes if it was in CD form instead of re-buying it from an official on-line store.

Anyhoo, if you have any one of the records on that list, feel free to contact me to see if we can agree on some exchange of some sort. I don't mind if i don't get Siouxsie and the Banshees' lame Peepshow, but I really would like to get my ears on a digital version of the first Rollins Band record and the very good Bad Moon Rising by Sonic Youth.

Posted by phonono at juin 10, 2006 12:34 AM