maizey, I got funky's link, yes, but I wanted to hear the "full stuff", not only small snipples / pieces, you know. That's torture. But I have quite a good collection - mostly CD's - so I can hear them all and can remember my first steps in the dancing-school, oh, mostly the first very painful steps of my bumbling partner - hi, Uwe ;-)

FunkyMom, what a culture shock for a NYC girl! How do you like life as a Zonie? I was born in Phoenix, raised in southern California but realized I had enough of city life when my morning commute averaged 1.5 hours.. to travel a scant 13 miles.

graylox - sorry you are missing out. But I can't imagine why you would not be able to access the one that funky posted.

Just to add to the 60's post, the main page to the site has other decades and nostalgic compilations. These can be found on the banner links toward the middle of the page. I was at this site a couple of weeks ago and watched them all. There are also top 100 music charts for 1955 through 1965 below them. Here's the link: http://oldfortyfives.com/

GoodGOTD: c'mere! I have a job for you! I'm thinking you could start a business out here with that idea; heaven knows I'd be first in line. heh The fella that built this must have been a kindred spirit: http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd275/1HillbillyGirl/Mailbox_gun.jpg

Oh funky that was the 2. strike today, first Star Trek that didn't fly and now the 60th in small tiny bits ... please , mercy...

i imagine something like that would last a long time.

lasted a long time, too. A little touch-up for the paint once in a while...

oh man......nice.

heh, I helped a pal build a rude surprise for mailbox bashers.

boxed in a 4" I-beam 8 feet long, made a 1/2" steel mailbox, including the raised lettering, welded it on one end, painted the I-beam to look like pressure treated 4x4 and the box white then set it 4' into the ground- concreted.

he'd go out and find splintered bats for a long time in the mornings after that.

lived in cities, prefer small backwoods towns- like Drain.

lol!
glad you enjoyed it. i was just a kid in the latter part of the 60's, but my parents were hippies, (not hard-core, but hippies all the same) so i really had an experience. and i grew up with a slight (maybe not so slight) 60's obsession. the music may have been a huge part of that. :D

it sounds nice and peaceful where you live (except for runaway cows), and i would probably enjoy it for a little while. but i'm a city girl, nyc (queens) born and bred, so i can only handle the quiet for a short time. we will see how long i last here in tucson.

FunkyMom! That's a nice site .. and surely brought back memories! I didn't have a bouffant, flip or beehive hairdo .. my hair was long and straight and went past my knees. Gasoline was 23 cents a gallon when I got my drivers license, new cars cost a thousand bucks and we could still burn leaves in the back yard. It was safe to walk the streets and 50 cents would get us into the movies to watch 3 full length features, dozens of cartoons and a live magic show. There were no seat belts, no infomercials, no shortages of anything (including patriotism). Rent was cheap .. a huge 2-story house with basement and yard cost 76 dollars per month.

I remember Elvis' first television show on Ed Sullivan .. my ultra-conservative father walked in just in time to see ol' Swivel Hips wiggle all over the stage. The TV went OFF, even though Ed Sullivan would only allow Elvis to be televised from the waist up. Whatever happened to family-safe television, anyway? I reckon the 60's did turn out to be the last innocent generation.

(oh .. now that I've retired to the country, life is almost as good as the 60's. It has only been 5 years since party lines were eliminated here; up until that time, we had only to dial the last 4 digits of someone's phone number but chances were good that we would be connected to everyone else on the block. I can once again burn leaves in the yard. The streets were paved a scant 25 years ago--and not since, I'm thinking. You can rent a two-story house for 200 bucks a month, or buy a 5 bedroom with acreage for 20 thousand. The biggest crime is mailbox bashing ...well, except for one aggravated cow a few months ago.. she had escaped, was caught and then tied to a utility pole until the old farmer could get his trailer in place. Ol' Bossey got tired of it, and with a mighty heave broke the darn pole and took off at a high lope. The entire town was plunged into darkness, but that didn't stop the old gal. Last I saw of her, she was ambling down our road with the farmer, a couple local boys and the sheriff--lights a' flashing-- in hot pursuit.)

even though this isn't exclusively about music, i'm posting it here since we have been strolling down memory lane together:

http://objflicks.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

@ BuBBy! Thank you for updating the link. Many years have passed since I made the site (more than a dozen) and I did not realize Homestead had changed the web address. Guess it's time to upgrade that site!

@ FunkyMom, thanks for the kind words about my Dad and his music. I had to laugh about your daughter requesting a Beatles theme .. now I REALLLLY feel old! It brought back memories of singing to my daughter when she was a baby; then as she grew older, her first sentence was: "NO la la's, Mom!"

thank you so much, bubby!

bobby, now i can comment. what a beautiful site. such a wonderful act of love and respect.

i also grew up in a home surrounded by music and music lovers. my dad was a musician and my brother is a musician. i love music. i love to listen and i love to sing. i won't be winning any awards, but i can carry a tune and i have a pretty good ear.

i married a musician (unfortunately, it didn't work out, but hopefully one day i'll enjoy the memories of being on the road and being backstage and meeting artists who i looked up to-although you met much bigger stars than i did), and am now starting to raise a daughter in a home filled with music. she is 3 and already has such a love for music. for her 3rd birthday party, she requested a beatles theme.

thank you bobby and everyone for sharing such wonderful memories.

lekanaw- what an amazing childhood you must have had.

qb7894- what a wonderful bedtime tradition. i have always sung to my daughter at bedtime (beatles, cat stevens, songs from hair and a few made up lullabies), and now she listens to cd's on her very own boombox.

copmom- what a cool job to have at 16!

whiterabbit- you are doing a wonderful thing exposing your children to music, i think it is so important. you say your family wasn't musically oriented, but it seems like both you and your brother got the "bug" from somewhere.

you did a wonderful thing starting this thread. thank you.

FM, try http://navylights.homestead.com/ instead (I've updated the link in Bobby's original post also).

i'm really upset. for some reason i cannot access the site you made, bobby. it sounds so wonderful.

@ Maizey .. sorry for the delay in answering (have spent the last few days at the hospital with my Mom). Twelve-track cartridge players first appeared during the transition from the older 4-tracks to the 'newer' 8-tracks. They could play both cartridges, so some enterprising soul named them '12 track' because 8 + 4 = .... <groan>
... and thank you for the information on the old aluminum records! I had forgotten so much of that. Since I am trying to put all the family information into scrapbooks, the information you provided will certainly help fill in some blanks.

@Lee .. you mentioned an album I've never heard of .. and that's saying something! When did it come out? Is it a 'garage band' album... obscure, but loaded with talent?

@Copmom .. yikes! I'd have to put my little brother up for adoption under those circumstances :>

Thanks to all of you for making this such a delightful thread!

I haven't paid for music in my life.

a pillow will catch and absorb the drool, too.
:D

Wabbit... I think you need to put a pillow on your keyboard! Might be a bit more comfortable!

Pass the Kutchie - Mighty Diamonds

I know what you mean copmom, I'm 51 but still feel like I'm in my teens. Up until the accident in Sept 05 I kept myself fit and active by cycling to work which was a 40 mile round trip, and enjoyed skiing, hiking and climbing (though nothing big, my mop of hair, which up until about 10 years ago I could sit on is still thick and hardly any sign of grey which gives me a youthful appearance (or so everyone says. My wife who is 13 years my junior though I was only a year or so older than herself when I met her on a Marine Biology field course that I attended every year while working as a researcher. Up to that point I used to listen to music virtually every minute I could and always went to bed with music but my wife doesn't really have that much of a love for music other than when she's travelling from plasce to place. She always either turned my music off or turned it down so that I couldn't enjoy it and now I don't listen to music like I used to, though since subscribing to one of the E-music sites last April I have a renewed interest in listening to music. So far I've downloaded a real mixed bag of sounds including some Captain Beefheart, lots of world music in particular Indian Raga's and a mix of Indian and Japanese music, Soft Machine, Goran Bregovic, and Pink Floyd, though I never rated The Darkside of the Moon too highly. I much preferred the earlier stuff especially Ummagumma, Saucerful of Secrets and Obscured by Clouds. I've just picked up a compilation of the Yardbirds because it had one of my favorite Yardbirds tracks on it called Smokestack lightning. Thankfully the Pink Floyd Album I bought recently was a live album from 1966-67 - well it's not really an album, more like a 12 inch record with Interstellar Overdrive and Nicks Boogie being the only 2 tracks. It's amazing how you don't even have to leave your house to get virtually every sound ever recoded

While writing up my M.Sc. (1990), I moved down to Cambridge with my wife (who was then my girlfriend) She was doing a year out in industry and had got a job working at the Plant Breeding Institute (anyone heard of Maris Piper potatoes - they were developed at the Plant Breeding Institute which is on a Lane called Maris Lane. Anyway, I discovered that we were living only about 100 yards from Syd Barrett. There was a story going around the neigbourhood that Syd had smashed his neigbours wooden fence down with a large axe, which immediately brought to mind the song 'Careful with that Axe Eugene', lol. Sadly he passed away some time ago.

Thank you for the information about the deck Bobby, I'll certainly look into it as it would cost a lot more to convert the modest collection I have (around 400 I think. I had quite a few stolen and I went througha stage of lending them out to fly by night friends many of ehome never returned them. All my Early Genesis, Pink Floyd (thankfully I still have Ummagumma) Soft Machine, Simon and Garfunkel, disappeared as well as many more. I don't understand how people could do that. An aquaintance at university was a keen collector of Frank Zappa and literally only had two or three albumns missing from his collection. guess what I had one of them; a live double album called Live in New York. Which he immediately offered me the equivalent of $100 for (this is going back 20 years)I actually gave the album to him as I didn't think it was worth so much. At the same tim he asked if he could borrow several other albums of mine. I never saw him again. Grrrrr.

Music is definitely a beautiful thing.

Thank you folks for making this thread such a wonderful place to visit. I love it, though it is also sometimes sad to hear some of the stories. I do hope everyone here is happy and enjoying life to the full. :)

I'd better check my Email to see if I've been given a heads up on the next game. It's less than six hours away and I'm about to get that dreaded keyboard imprint on my forehead. Last night I woke up wityh my nose squashed against the R key and had many pages of R's to delete, lol.

Hi Bobby :-)
No, I think u must be right about the 7" size. Maybe it was 7" & 9" then?
I know there were 2 sizes - I said 8" & 10" by putting my hands 2geder b4 posting and measuring them - more a guesstimate. There was no "studio" anywhere near, heck, there wasn't much of anything anywhere near - as I said we had radio 2hrs/evenings *IF* there was electricity during those 2 hrs...
My thinking is they came from Germany, bc I *guessed* the Akai came from there, but really, I'm just guessing about all this.
My parents were AGFA(Germany) representatives and they ordered their photographic machinery & stuff from them.
Yes, my Mom was the most kind, smart, courageous & hard working person I know. She died awfully young at 54(my age almost) 37y ago already. I miss her so terribly. Thank you for ur kind words.
I think I'll steer clear from this thread, the flood of memories... it's overwhelming!

I just remembered something else. Many years ago, (about 45+).. (heck this 4/18 we'll be married FIFTY years! I don't FEEL that old.. still think like I'm 17)! Anyway, we lived in a little house in northern Calif. Under the house hubby found several boxes stored down there and all of them were filled with the really OLD 78's. The kind that had the picture of the dog next to the megaphone/player. There were some Jolsen ones, and don't remember what else. When we moved back east I shipped those boxes to my younger sister, and I know those oldies would be worth a pretty penny now. She was in her late teens/early 20's at that time. Asked her recently what ever happened to those old records.. she said, "I don't know", probably gave them away or just got rid of them! Arggggggh!

Saw the PBS special last year about that Amos&Andy record.
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigations/501_amos_andy.html

@ Bobby - I knew about and found reference to multi-track tape recorders, but not 12 track players. 16, 24, 32 track recorders but can't find 12 players. Must have been rather obscure. Especially since you gave us the <grin>. Now you have me looking for stuff! Can you tell that I love internet research?

-------------------------------------------------------

Excerpt about aluminum records from:
http://www.videointerchange.com/vintage_78s.htm

"Metal records made of steel or aluminum had a certain advantage over their shellac or other composite material based counterparts. Metal records would not de-laminate or warp ! Unfortunately, they would however, corrode if improperly stored.

Aluminum discs such as the Speak-O-Phone, were made out of soft aluminum, and in the early days, it was imperative that they should never be played using a standard steel needle, lest the soft groove wall be permanently and almost instantly destroyed. These discs were originally intended to be played on early acoustic equipment using either fiber, bamboo, hardwood or even needles made from cactus. The soft needles would do no damage to the soft metal grooves.

Recommended tracking forces on metal disks such as the Speak-o-Phones was a recommended 3 to 4 Ounces ! (note: 1 oz = 28.47 grams). Thus converting to grams would result in recommended tracking force of 85 to 114 grams ! Little wonder a hard steel needle would destroy the groove walls with such high stylus forces and the relatively high mass - low compliance of the reproducer.

If you have an aluminum record, never attempt to play it with anything but the above mentioned "needles". Just one play with a hard needle, and the groove walls will be INSTANTLY trashed !"

Picture of an Amos & Andy aluminum record:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/06/25/arts/25hist.2.ready.html
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20" discs:
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2003/janfeb/features/sound.html
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Excerpt about 10" discs found at:
http://www.vinylalbum.com/History_of_Vinyl_Record.html

"While a 78 rpm record is brittle and relatively easily broken, both the microgroove LP 33? rpm record and the 45 rpm single records are made from vinyl plastic which is flexible and unbreakable in normal use. 78s come in a variety of sizes, the most common being 10 inch (25 cm) and 12 inch (30 cm) diameter, and these were originally sold in either paper or card covers, generally with a circular cutout allowing the record label to be seen. The Long-Playing records (LPs) usually come in a paper sleeve within a colour printed card jacket which also provides a track listing. 45 rpm singles and EPs (Extended Play) are of 7 inch (17.5 cm) diameter, the earlier copies being sold in paper covers. Grooves on a 78 rpm are much coarser than the LP and 45."

----------------------------------------------------------
Very informative and interesting page about recording history:
http://www.videointerchange.com/audio_history.htm
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I am stunned ... and humbled ..by the praise offered by so many about my Dad and his music. The website doesn't do him justice 'cause I can't do html, css or other fancy stuff (but I can rebuild transmissions..go figure).

Noticed several of you fascinated by 8-track recordings. Does anyone know what a
12-track player was for <grin>? Better yet, have you ever seen an aluminum record or 10-inch and 20-inch records?

@qb7894 What delightfully warm memories you have of your Dad! What a great way to get young'ns to settle down and go to sleep! I miss my Dad, too .. lost him to Alzheimer's a few years ago. Not a day goes by without him crossing my mind, and I reckon it's about the same for you and your Dad.

@Runes and Face: I have all of the Mystic Moods albums..wanna borrow some?

@LeKanaw: You were extremely blessed to have such resourceful and caring parents. I cannot imagine what it would have been like for them to constantly be on alert with minimal freedom. What remarkable strength to survive ..nay, thrive under such circumstances! I remember those Akai decks ... the 8" and 10" reels were found mostly around studios. The everyday-size was 7", if I remember correctly. Perhaps your Dad had a friend working in a professional studio or armed forces network? (And I know what you mean by those trips down memory lane .. I had to double up on the Geritol, being surrounded by so many young'ns :^ )

@Robert: most of that album is _still_ noise, but I think I'm prejudiced becase of working backstage at a couple of their concerts. Probably why I'm deaf now!

@WABBIT! What a great thing you have done! Glad to know your name is a tribute to one of the best voices in the music industry. That gal had some POWER and I often thought she didn't need all those microphones .. you could have heard her outside the auditorium! Too bad she wasted so much talent on booze, but then we lost a lot of entertainers that way. Thought I'd let you know about a new turntable on the market ... transfers LP's to MP3's, directly to your computer. It costs about $125USD. It's in a mail order catalog called 'firstSTREET', specializing in baby boomer gadgets. You can find them at firststreetonline.com As for the kids' music lessons ... stay with it! Dad was five years old when he started, and even though Alzheimer's took everything else away, he knew he was supposed to have a trumpet in his hands! Music is THAT powerful.

@ Bubby ... I wore out two 'Dark Side of the Moon' LP's, playing them so often. Almost the same with Blue Oyster Cult's 'Don't Fear the Reaper.'

@graylox, copmom, maizey et al ... your kind words are so welcome. I will share them with Mom, and I'm sure it will brighten her day.

Isn't music grand? Look how it has touched all of our lives!

copmom - That's so cool! American Bandstand, too! WOW!

This has all really brought back memories. I asked my hubby what the first record he ever bought was, and he said he never did.. then suddenly he said, YES, he bought one for me when we were dating! It was a Hank Williams one, but I can't remember the name of it!

Something else I remember.. when I was about 13-14 me and my girlfriends would buy monthly magazines that listed all the lyrics for the top songs that we would hear on the radio, so we could learn the words and sing along with the radio. That was about the time comic books were a big deal.

When I was about 16 I was taking business classes in high school.. typing, shorthand, etc. and they had a program where we worked one week and school one week. My job was in the radio logging dept. at American Broadcasting (ABC),in downtown New York. Once the DJ's played the music those records piled up so they let us take them home periodically. That was fun! On our lunch hour we could go to the studios to sit and eat our sandwiches and watch rehearsals for TV shows like American Bandstand. Ahh the good old days!

I found some interesting links about the different types of recordings, so that everyone can get an idea of what they are and how they were developed and used. While clicking on links in the Wikipedia site,I thought it funny that the example for an 8-track cartridge was "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols". I still have the album! :-)

http://www.recording-history.org/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sound_recording
http://www.8trackheaven.com/