Someone sent me a photo the other day of a plastic insert
that we used to use to put into a 45 record so it would play on a regular
turntable. One of those little round things.

I am thinking that  what I just said might not make any sense at
all to someone under 40 years of age. They might know about a 45 record, but
did they know about a 33 or a 78? Or a Victrola? I think not. They might not
even know what a turntable was. Hint: it was a mechanical device used for
playing vinyl recordings of various sizes.

Then of course we moved in the eight-track phase. Those and
cassette tapes were so much fun. You could never find a song in the mix unless
you pressed forward or backward and stopped in just the right place. Which
never happened. Then you had to use a pencil to move the tape into the correct
position if you managed to get it tangled up or twisted. I am not making this
stuff up. This really happened.

But we did have sounds, lots of sounds. We had lo-fi,
hi-fi….stereo …woofers, amplifiers, mixers, tweeters and speakers the size of
garbage can lids. We could shatter glass if we wanted to do so. We were live
and we could dance like crazy with 110 decibels blasting away until the
neighbors or the cops shut us down. Long live rock n’ roll.

Ah, but then we got the Walkman and then I-Pods and we were
off to the races or at least we thought we were. Now all of those old long-playing
records were tossed into the trash and we downloaded or uploaded our entire
collection of music into a device no bigger than a cigarette box. Then when we
dropped this little jewel into the toilet (tell me you haven’t done this at one
time or another) Puff- there goes our stuff. And to make matters worse, long
play vinyl records are now in style and the ones you tossed are worth more than
you paid for them. Go figure.

Now everything is on a MP-3 or a MP-4 or a flash drive or in
the ‘cloud’. So, my music is everywhere. Spotify, Amazon, Google Play and who
knows where else? I think I saw one of my songs float across my window at the
office….must have dropped out of the cloud.

If I want to find some old record, I have to ask Alexa to do
it for me….and she isn’t exactly easy to deal with ..is she?

Last month, I asked her to play “White Christmas’ ..she
threw out a version by someone with a band called ‘Velvet Garbage’ with
instruments I failed to identify. Sounded kind of like someone banging on a
trash can..someone in my office told me ‘it’s heavy metal.’ Whatever that is.

The other thing we have to put up with is how to listen to
something. First we had just the speakers….so you simply turned your device up
or down, depending upon whether you wanted it louder or softer. Then came
headphones. Big, bulky things like fighter pilot’s wear. Then we got little ear
plugs that were attached to a cord hooked to your device. Then we got wireless
ear phones that might stay in your ears or might not. The you had to figure out
if the little stick points up or down. Then once you get them into your ears,
you have to pair them to your device via Bluetooth. Now if you have 3 or 4
devices, it becomes a challenge to unpair the ones you don’t want just to use
the ones you do want. This is a chore in and of itself since you cannot find or
remember the name of your blue tooth wireless hearing device since they don’t
have real names like…’red ear buds’…no they are jbob470 or zozho2.1.

By the time you get all of this synced and ready to play,
you find that your wireless device has no battery and is thus unusable. By then
you are no longer in the mood to listen to anything.

You just want a beer or more wine.

Besides how can you dance with someone when only one of you
can hear the music through your blue tooth enhanced wireless hearing devices?

Give me a Victrola, give me a turntable, give me anything,
just let me hear some music and relax without the hassle I seem to have created
for myself.

Oh, and another beer.

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