Old favourites of the Classical catalogue

We're looking backwards this week with things that changed expectations and one lies in recording.

In the beginning there was a horn, a great big one that artists performed into, cutting their record and by the mid 1920's the horn was replaced by electronic recording of the session to an acetate to make the discs from using microphones.

While shallac 78 rpm records tended to be noisy thanks to the harsh abrasive used in making them, the Decca Record company in England worked throughout the 1940's in increasing the range of low and high frequency sounds that could be captured on to them.

That with a combination of the new quieter plastic records, finer grooves and the introduction of 33 1/3 and 45 rpm speeds created the High Fidelity Full Frequency Range Recording in the early 1950's improving the quality of recorded sound in the home.

This lead to an interest in obtaining the best possible sound and the hobby of High Fidelity audio we know today.

Nothing stands still and so work continued as the new HiFi discs became the norm to enable spacial information to be recorded to records in the way tapes, developed from the late 1940's had shown adding realism to recordings of orchestras and groups of musicians.

Decca played a great part in pushing the new stereophonic record system that could play the original mono discs making many new recordings often to great acclaim and issuing demonstration records to show what what it offered.

The long playing record era had started an passion for making full recordings of classical music, some unheard outside of concert halls, some falling out of favour too that music fans embraced.

In the mid to late 1950's Decca recorded a number of popular works for the very first time in stereophonic sound that to this day are highly regarded with original lps being much sought after.

Those two lps and others featuring the works of Igor Stravinsky were compiled from the original tapes to this specially priced double compact set.

The same orchestra and conductor recorded many of the works of Rimsky-Korsakov in that early set of stereo lp releases which were equally loved and rounded up in cd sets.

They were amongst the earliest records I listened to on the Ace Of Diamonds and Eclipse reissues on record so it was nice to recently acquire these cd versions.

Now Yearbook 1981

Various Artists hits compilations of sorts had been around for getting on for some sixty years from the days of "Sound alike" re-recordings of hits issued most famously by Hallmark in their Top Of The Pops series offering eleven or twelve hits of a four week period for little more than the price of a 45 rpm single with an eye catching cover to the first original artist sets in the early 1970's that might offer up to 24 hits on a single on tv advertised labels such as K Tel, Ronco and the like.

They were very popular although the sound wasn't too good for squashing the lowest and highest notes and chopping the songs to get it all to fit between two lp sides.

The scene changed in 1983 after a few better quality sets from Ronco when EMI and Virgin joined forces to start the iconic Now That's What I Call Music series and CBS and Warners got together in 1984 with the HITS series.

If you were around in the 1980's like me the chances are you have those NOW and HITS records still but there is a line between them and the less good sets we had before.

Now That's What I Call Music launched last year a deluxe series of albums that took hits, packaging them into four cds in main booklet styled set with short notes and a three cd Extra set which you may of collected.

That series had a vinyl version which saw a selection off the main four cd set issued on three records and with that I saw a place for this, the most recent version covering the year 1981 which was a massive one in UK Pop Music and to which I only had the Ronco Super Hits '81 double thin sounding set from Xmas that year.

There was on a little duplication and in any event this would sound much fuller than any number of K Tel and Ronco sets of that year so I bought it.

The record itself is pressed on quiet red coloured vinyl, three discs in a single pocket, a bit cheap but functional and was quite cheap allowing for inflation comparing with what I payed back then.

With hits from the Human League, Adam Ant, Madness, Queen, Reo Speedwagon and many others it certainly fills a hole in my vinyl hits collection all right.

Eldorado

 

Eldorado (subtitled A Symphony by the Electric Light Orchestra) was the fourth album issued by the Electric Light Orchestra in October of 1974 in the UK and their first to use an orchestra conducted by Louis Clark as part of the groups sound.

It is about a Walter-Mitty character who journeys into fantasy worlds through dreams in his attempt to escape the mundane reality of his life.

The recording features Peter Forbes-Robinson who acts as the narrator. 

It was the home of the singles Illusions in G Major and Can't Get It Out Of My Head, a hit from early 1975.

In March of 2022 a newly remastered version was issued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs of Chicago, Illinois from the original analogue master tapes that brings more detail and depth to the sound although some parts reveal the squashed sound Jeff Lynne was going for in producing it .

It was issued as a one step 45 rpm album and also on super audio cd which is what I brought that shows improvements when played on my player although it has a regular cd layer

Summer Fun with The Beano 2022

While I take a bit of breather outdoors this weekend as I post stuff slightly in advance and with anyone looking at their calendars and diaries bought just before Christmas and fingers being crossed I do get to get away this year will sense Summer is almost upon us. 

Summer in times gone past meant we bought or were given things to help us as kids pass that time away and in the heyday of The Comic that tended to mean a deluxe full colour expanded edition with all new stories.

Well, it's that time of the year again and so the sole survivor on the street of the comics some of us were brought up with returns with its special edition.

It bills itself as a Summer Activity Special which gives us a clue as all modern comics have a social side not just a collection of new individual comic strips but incorporating fun things to do being given stickers to stick anywhere you wish, joke pages, quizzes and competitions as part of the mix.

The Clock struck at the top of the hour signalling the end end of Summer School Term as Ms Mistry the (new) teacher at Bash Street School questions why all of Class 3C are looking at it wanting to set Homework while back in Class 2B the Bash Street Kids are getting rebellious.

Little does anyone realize they set to involved in historical time travelling high jinks thanks to Professor Screwtop, Rubi's father's inventions that affect everyone in Beanotown with it facing the prospect of  being lost in time forever.

Somehow all the regulars from Beanotown must find a way saving it from such a fate.

Unlike some years they haven't dispensed with the individual page strips for Rubi's Screwtop Science, Minnie the Minx, Dennis the Menace and naturally enough the Bash Street Kids although sometimes characters do guest in each others cartoon strips as the story develops.

Nobody has got any older over the years although we are clearly in 2022 and not 1972 and the world the modern girl or boy inhabits for whom this is really aimed and perhaps some of us remain even if things such as Smartphones were things we never could of foreseen.

It is available NOW.

New month, new thoughts

 It is a rather sunny weekend as I've been out catching the sun, jam jars optional .

These days it does seem odd to be listening out for rather important information rather than just waiting on an update but for me the spoken word is the main media for such things more than say television with its heavy use of images.

It doesn't help that this last two and a bit years has been rather like no other in recent memory with continual crisis, restrictions and what not one on top of another and various players in all of this making less than disguised threats to our well being.

You might find yourself emotionally needy, in need of a little tlc and at least a hug as you struggle through all of this.

It isn't always the most apparent thing not least in what is often a stiff upper lip "mustn't grumble" culture and it is true many disabled people do feel pressured to understate how they are feeling apart from how things are affecting them.

Familiar routines from better times can help such as play or reading as strangely enough just helping out so long as whoever does pay attention to any limits because it can help with feeling wanted and included.

It doesn't hurt to enquire.

Making things better

 This week I'll talk about something a bit different but I feel relevant.

Sometimes it can seem as if everything is "just so" in this world to the point that perhaps it would appear to utopia not because anyone may actually suggest it but more because we don't talk about things that can happen although they may not be any one persons fault.

Communication is the backbone of much such as that sense of belonging to a group or to being a friend or acquaintance of somebody because it is how we transmit our thoughts  so it perhaps isn't so surprising that in corporations where few may know each other well they do research into this. 

One thing that is increasingly recognized is the written word as in emails or other text types isn't necessarily the  best way of getting something done because apart from delays compared to face to face much information around how is something is meant goes missing meaning it often has to be chased up.

This can and does happen in our private lives too.

Conversations that one person may of spent time working on drafting and redrafting can seem to have acquired at the other end an interpretation that may seem a good way from what was intended.

That can lead to a response which  is puzzling (Britishers may say "flummoxed") and may even result in the belief that that are not understood that over time may move toward feeling they are never fully accepted.

That leads to unspoken hurt lingering.

The crazy thing is actually if we all admit to this, draw a line underneath of it and try to work things through rather than picking at a scab  we can improve those interactions not least by just being together and learning to accept we may not of understood each others intentions toward each other.

Nobody's perfect so why not try do things differently?