Misao Okawa, 116 as of 5 March 2014
Baby and Baby Lily
You’ll notice THE DARLING wee one in the photo is me but that’s my Baba (great-grandmother), who’s quite the Jewess. She lived to be rather old (drinking a great deal of coffee and eating a lot, as you can see). The other lady is the newly-crowned oldest woman in the world. They are from very different places but I’m telling you, she looks a lot like my Baba did!
If I live that long, I suppose I’ll do, too.
You could break this down to the various methods of listening but in particular, CD?
Of my age group, virtually every answer is, ‘…but it was a gift.’ They were new to us and as a young adult (teen but I moved out at age 15) trying to make ends meet, I didn’t own a CD player for several years. I held onto that CD gift, though! They cost about 40USD for your ‘LP’ (not box set) CD in my area. That’s WHEN THEY FIRST CAME OUT. I don’t know how to cypher the inflation on that to see what it would be in today’s USD but holy crap!
EDIT: I found this calculator for adjustment. It says $99.16. That’s what I mean when I say ‘most my age received as gifts.’
Mine was Duran Duran. I felt like a rock star to own a CD, even that I couldn’t listen to yet!
I got a hand-me-down electric record player that folded up and looked a bit like a hat box. Even the youngsters probably have seen what I mean in old movies. I had a book with 45 record about Henny Penny (a gift) and one that had ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’ * on one side, can’t recall the other (also a gift). My first purchased 45 was Queen. I did a lot of 45s because that’s all the money I could get together. I scavenged others and finally started scavenging LPs. I cannot recall my first but I know that I only had like FIVE forever: ELO, Jimi Hendrix, CSNY, The Beatles and Gordon Lightfoot. I also had access to 8 Tracks but only when people were gone, as I didn’t have a player. I got my first CD player in the 1990s. I still have a record player — a much nicer one that was part of a component system but gave away my vinyl back in the 80s when I had to move out. I’ve done a blog post about the ones nobody would take — still have those gnarly things in the barn, of all places.
* Oh, and Shirley Temple is dead. We weren’t close but I did have that record.
When I was watching the Kathy and Andy show NYE, they had some people stop by, most notably -to me, anyway Debbie Harry. Kathy sang with her, which was fun. It should be noted Kathy isn’t a singer.
Kathy and Andy Show
They also had these two young men come by and introduced them as Macklemore. With a name like Macklemore, I reckoned they did some kind of Country / Western. Apparently, they’ve had a big year cos Andy said as much. Yesterday, it was too horrible to exit the ranch for work, so I called out (8 of 50 people made it to work, so I’m not alone). I decided to flip on the telly, which I don’t do too often. I prefer my TV on DVD, thank you.
I was looking at the guide and it said ‘Macklemore.’ I reckoned that had to be those two nice young men and flipped to it. OMG for one thing, it’s not Country! It was a song about going to the Thrift Shop, which is the only place I ever got ‘new’ clothes that weren’t sewn for me by Gram (til I moved out at age 15, when I continued to buy from church bazaars and second hand shops).
-are the new readers gone yet?
I get where this became a hit! It’s funny and has an engaging video. I’m sure 92.7% of the world has seen or heard it but in case you haven’t, this video is Lily-Approved. #recommended
The next song they played was more like … real (ahem) rap, which I don’t care for much. I was there when rap was created — really. I mean, speaking of Debbie Harry (I never liked Rapture) was the first white person I ever heard or saw rapping. We rolled around theSTL listening to NWA when people didn’t know what that stood for, Easy E? All our cassettes were what the DJ at the club dubbed of his mixes. For.Real.
I was happy to see hip hop come along, though hip hop isn’t what it once was, either. By what, 92? Most wasn’t worth listening to in my old-assed opinion. I’m not saying all of it but it used to be Something.
There’s still a record store called Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis, although it’s not the original shop. They moved into the old Walgreens back in (I think) the late 1980s. The original VV was a favorite hangout. It had hardly any space to squeeze through if somebody else was in the rat-track between stacks. And hey, I was a much skinnier broad-lette back then, too!
Anyhoozles. Some of the vinyl below was purchased there. I can only tell if the sticker says so. I have only one clear memory of a purchase from these photos. I used to buy something now and then on a whim. The Transvision Vamp vinyl was chosen based upon the dude on the cover trying so fecking hard to look like Sid Vicious. It cracked me up. I was like, ‘Dude! Alright, already. I’ll buy your shit album. Hope it’s better than shit…” I didn’t care for it — neither did anybody I knew at the time.
I don’t remember that but I know one thing about these extant LPs:
I was late to replacing vinyl with CDs because I didn’t have loads of money (CDs could cost like $40 back then and that was back then. I guess that’s like saying $60 now…Anyway, point is:
As I upgraded to digital, I gave away my albums (nobody would pay money for old vinyl then).
These discs only exist because they had NO TAKERS.
The LPs and EPs were shoved into boxes that have huddled behind a sofa in the tack room (climate-controlled) of a barn for years and years!
Apparently, nobody else liked Duran Duran:
This is a mixture of my stuff and Brother’s. The Martin Mull and Disco Bill, for example, aren’t mine. Take note of the fabu local bands: Mama’s Pride and Head East. Laibach (covering Beatles songs) was an hilarious find, too.
* I borrowed the by-line from Bob’s Scratchy Records. I highly recommend KDHX.org (listen online if you’re not a local!). They’re the only radio station worth listening to and what you get at any given time is completely different music styles. As they say, ‘All of the hits, none of the time.’
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The image below are my mother’s albums. In that box was also a bisection of a tree (cut so you see the rings of the tree) with a painting of Jesus knocking on a door and two candle sticks. Treasures, all, I suppose.
opinions expressed may be incorrect 