I have a vinyl LP collection. It dates from the late 1980s and 1990s. Most of the albums date were released in that time, and they're on indie labels on the whole. That's 'propper' indie, not major label imprints (if that's the correct description), bought from independent record shops. You know the kind of stuff : things that I heard on John Peel and wrote down to look for on my next trip to town.
Yup, I was 'one of those' cliched awkward types that genuinely thought the band was better before you heard about them, when they played in the back rooms of pubs and were struggling to eat properly every night.
Like everyone else, I digitised my CD collection... hang on... aren't they digital already? OK then, I ripped my CDs years ago. But, I've only bothered to digitise a few of my vinyl LPs as even with fantastic tools like audacity, it's still a long winded pain in the backside. Connect up your computer to your amplifier, set up your preferences in audacity, do a test recording, do the real recording, usually do something to the WAV files (make them louder, or cut the silence at either end of the track), type in the song titles, find the album art (or scan it yourself if you're really unlucky). You can see how tiresome that would soon become.
The few that I have recorded and convert into MP3 were done because I wanted then on my MP3 player and simply couldn't find them on the internet: neither on legitimate sites nor on in the murkier parts. Not that I plumb the murkiest depths looking for them, I have a friend who seems to have found loads of interesting music from that time on things like IRC channels but the effort seemed a little too much for me.
I recently cleared my vinyl shelves to carry out some decorating, and realised that if I was ever going to listen to most of it again I'd have to pull my finger out and get my LP collection, by hook or by crook, onto my hard drive. Or even into the cloud. And so this blog was born.
Therefore, I resolve to regularly, 'randomly' pick an LP from my vinyl collection, write a bit about it and see if I can find in somewhere (anywhere) as MP3s. If I can't, I'll dig out my cables and turn it into MP3s myself.
