the pitter pattering beats of the blogswamp

The trouble with music blogs is that once I start looking at them, their blogrolls look too tempting, and once I tread that way, I get lost in a maze of twisty little passages, just like in 1980 when I would stare at my endless Adventure games on the big rolls of teletype paper, trying to figure out how to get free of that darned maze and avoid that darned dwarf w/ axe.

Even the blogs filled with music I don’t like I am still fond of. I love to see all this stuff about all this music, especially things I’ve never heard of! I especially like blogs like (the sadly inactive) Something I Learned Today where he posted mp3’s of rare punk 7″ records. But what is the most interesting is anything about vinyl. Not that I listen to vinyl much, as I have lately been looking for interesting and new (to me) Death Metal, in non-vinyl format (such as: Abominattion, Mithras, Necrophagist and Spawn of Possession)… But my heart will always belong to LP’s. I are currently in a bad state in that regards, not only is 75% of my vinyl in storage, but the motor on my Rega Planar 2 died a slow death a year or two ago. While I’ve been waiting to feel like we have the money to fix it, I’ve been stuck with the Thorens TD-165 (I think), that was an irresistible yard sale buy for me a good number of years ago. While it is a fine and fun device (and more user friendly than the bare-bones Planar), I don’t really have a home environment that is appropriate for a deck with any kind of suspension. So keeping still while in the vicinity of the Thorens, when it is playing, is a must… And a bit of an inconvenience, with a dog and a toddler running around.

Regardless, it seems to have died as well, losing all desire to spin-round. Sigh. I am certainly still not in a spot where we feel like dropping three figures to get one of these (well, it would be the Rega, certainly) fixed… Means even more reliance on digital media, and no more converting LP’s to MP3’s for a while. Luckily, there is an endless stream of blogs where I can live the vinyl life vicariously.