My how the times have changed... continued

As most of you know, I love Apple products. Not only the magnificently designed hardware but the software as well, especially the Apps. One App that I particularly like is Shazam. If I hear a song I like on the radio, in a store, or someplace else, I can press the Shazam App and, almost instantly, discover its name and artist. Then if I want to buy it for my collection, a couple of more touches with the finger and it is mine.

My how times have changed...

I became interested in music around age 12 or 13. Music in those days was either available as a vinyl LP or in cassette tapes.

You could purchase blank cassette tapes and create your own "playlist" so to speak. You could even record music from the radio to a cassette tape if you had a microphone, which I did.

Recording and editing from the radio was a fine art. There were commercials, DJ "blabber" and other obstacles that had to be navigated so that you were left with nothing but pure music, with very little background noise (I had to pray that my younger siblings or the dog would not interrupt me and ruin a good recording). I also had to calculate the length of songs so that they would fit perfectly on one side of a cassette tape. A 60 min tape, was 30 min a side, which was about 10 songs. Unless of course one of the songs was "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.

I remember one New Year's day, when the family was gathered at my grandparents place for dinner,  the radio was playing the top 100 songs from the previous year. As the countdown got close to the top, I had to excuse myself from dinner to go and record the #1 song. I waited until the DJ had finished his introduction and then started the recording just as the song began. I then had to wait until the song was almost over to stop the recording, before the DJ came back on. It was an art, and with practice, I became quite skilled. The number one song that year...Tie a yellow ribbon by Tony Orlando and Dawn.

My equipment later progress to where I had a a turntable for LP's and a cassette player for tapes so that I could record directly from the LP to the tape without the risk of background noise.

My Pioneer turntable, Teac Cassette player and Pioneer SX 650 Tuner/Amp... I was rocking.

Although, I think my iphone fits in my pocket a lot easier.