elrod-tom
Moderator - Prefers "stereo weirdo" to "audiophile"
I am lucky enough to be able to listen to music pretty much all day every day at work. Only occasionally, when things get REALLY hairy, do I have to take off the cans (lately the AKG K-81DJ). Of course, I'm not the only one...many of my coworkers do the same thing (well, they don't have the good taste in gear that I have, but oh well...
I keep a stack of 60 or so 4.7gb dvd-r's in my cube, with 320K files burned onto them. If you figure your garden variety CD reduces to about 100mb at 320K, well that gives you some idea how many CD's I own.
Invariably, someone will ask me "why do you NEED that much music...you can't possibly listen to it all". After acknowledging that they have a point, I give them the why: I can pick the perfect song for a given moment any time I want it...
Well, as crazy as it sounds, I can't always do this. This is why I keep buying more, and why I find music services like Rhapsody to be invaluable. Not only can I try newer music out prior to buying it, but I find myself repeatedly getting sucked into listening to stuff I've not heard in years.
When I was a teenager, I listened to a lot of what was (at the time) called "heavy metal"...stuff like Kiss - Destroyer, the first Van Halen album, Aerosmith's Get Your Wings, and various other stuff. Back in the day, however, there was a lot of 80's power pop floating around...they used to call in AOR - Album Oriented Rock - in the FM radio business. Tonight was one of those nights where I got sucked back in!!
I'm looking through the new additions in Rhapsody, and I notice Donnie Iris. He was pretty much a two hit wonder back in the day, but very popular in the midwest. I happened to catch his act in a dive bar in East Lansing, and the show was incredible. Lots of good memories...
Well, Rhapsody has a listing of Similar Artists and Similar Albums, which sends me ping-ponging all over the place for 2-3 tunes at a time. Kansas, Journey, I even found myself listening to (please...don't beat me up TOO MUCH for this one) Loverboy.
As an aside, how did they ever get as popular as they were back then with those goofy outfits? It looked like someone crossed Olivia Newton-John from her "Physical" days with pre-surgical Michael Jackson (remember the red jackets?)
OK...so from there, we're on the upswing again. Right now it's REO Speedwagon. I had a couple of favorite REO albums growing up - Nine Lives (if any of you remember the cover, it was the next best thing to Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream cover), You Can Tune a Piano (but you Can't Tuna Fish), and my personal favorite from back in the day, the live album You Get What You Play For. Now I've not owned any of these albums in years...not since I sold off most of my old vinyl. I'm probably not going to go out and buy them all over again, but here I am listening to them on a whim, and enjoying every minute of it.
Is it Hi-Fidelity (no pun intended)? Well, Rhapsody is 192K, upsampled at my DAC...not awful, but not like CD quality sound. Do I care in this instance? Are you kidding...I used to listen to most of these songs on a ****ty car stereo!! I don't know that they sounded much better in my best vinyl rig from back then (which was decent for the day). It does make me smile that I'm listening to these tunes with the same AKG K240M's that I did back in the day.
Well, I'm off to listen to Eddie Money now...enjoy.
