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Health & Fitness

Patch Blog: The Acoustic Download

This blog is about great music. Each week, I will describe and provide a link to a song that I feel is amazing in terms of song writing, soul, passion and artistry.

I hope that all one of my readers enjoyed my first selection for The Acoustic Download: "Ocean Breeze" by Pablo Cruise last week. 

I realize that I am asking you to do something that I have never done - download songs from iTunes.  I think that this is the case for two reasons that float around among my two working brain cells:  The first is that I am a stuck-up purist when it comes to listening to music.  I prefer to listen to my favorite songs within the context of the much larger work of art called the album.  Musical artists used to weave their songs into a collection of art that included eight to ten songs, often with a similar theme.  These collections of musical art also included a collection of visual art as a bonus - it was called an "Album Cover".  That's where the term "Cover Art" came from. 

If you are over 40, then you probably remember bringing home a new LP (Long Player for those under forty), slitting the smooth plastic over the album with your fingernail and inhaling that wonderful smell blended of vinyl and cardboard that sent your anticipation glands gushing.  You then set about performing "The Ritual":  First you pulled the paper jacket containing the vinyl disk out of the cardboard cover.  Now came the tricky part - removing the record from the paper jacket without touching the grooves on the disk with your fingers.  The proper way to do this was to grasp the bottom of the paper jacket with the fingers of your left hand (if you were right handed) tilt the bottom upward such that the disk would slide out into your open right hand so that only the edge of the record would hit in the crease between your thumb and the rest of your hand.  As the paper jacket was pulled off the album exposing the paper decal in the center of the disk, you would use two fingers of your right hand to support the disk while the rest of the jacket was pulled off.  At this point, you would place the open face of your left hand on the other side (edge) of the disk.  Now it was time to lovingly place the black, grooved disk on the turntable (with side one facing up) using both hands. 

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OK, its finally time to gently place the stylus at the end of the tone-arm onto the outer edge of the disk.  To accomplish this delicate task, you pulled a lever on the turntable down that raised the tone-arm so that it could not be dropped willy-nilly onto the disk. Then you had to bend over and use your eagle eye to position the stylus at exactly the right place - directly above the blank edge of the disk.  Now for the last step of "The Ritual" - the lever was flipped back up and the stylus settled gently on to the disk.  When you heard the "Kaaahhh-thunk" sound you knew that all was right with the world.

I now have to digress and say something that will piss a lot of people off.  The golden rule of owning a substantial album collection was: Never, ever, ever let a female go anywhere near your albums.  For whatever reason, young women seemed to have no respect for the proper care of vinyl and, in a twist of fate, always "Man-handled" your records, grabbing them forcefully between their greasy, sharp nailed fingers, throwing them on the turntable, picking up the tone-arm with their hand and dropping the needle on your record.  Inevitably, this led to the needle skittering and scraping across your precious grooves engraving a permanent skip in to your music.  Argggggghh!

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I know most of you old guys out there have knowing smiles on your face right now.  Remember at parties when all the guys would always keep a nervous watch on the stereo system?  Whenever one of the gals approached the stereo to change the record, it was the closest guy's responsibility to rush over and gallantly ask the lady what she would like to hear.  The dude was then able to perform "The Ritual", save the record for the future and make a lady happy all at the same time.  I will say that there were a few guys out there (and believe me, we know who you are!) that were just as reckless with our investment in vinyl disks as the ladies.

But I digress (did I say that?)  The stylus is on the record now ready to make sweet music in just a few seconds - just enough time to jump into a chair or on the bed and pick up the album cover.  While the stereo converted vibrations from the stylus into the sweet amplified music that we craved, we studied the album cover and jacket with all the intensity of cramming for a final.  Oh, it was a wonderful experience - something now lost on our instant gratification culture.

The second reason that I don't download music is... oh hell, I'm running out of word count on this blog so I'll save that for next week.

Oh yeah, the moment you've all been waiting for:  This week's song selection for downloading is probably the most beautiful song that I have ever experienced and I would guarantee that none of you have ever heard it. It is "Bellavia" by Chuck Mangione.  "Bellavia" is an instrumental piece with full orchestra backup by the famed flugelhorn artist from the 70's and 80's.  "Bellavia" means "Beautiful Life" and Chuck wrote this song for his mother.  All of us should be so lucky.

Click here for the iTunes link for "Bellavia."

For you instant gratification folks, you can listen to this song now on Grooveshark.com.

Sit back, relax and listen to beautiful music.

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