22 July 2016, End of For Sale

For a year now I’ve been making copies of records I don’t want to own. They are records I bought, a few I found, and a few that were given to me. Because they found their way into my stacks, I felt obligated to play each one once. And I figured if I were going to bother to drag a needle across each platter, I should play them into the computer while I played them at my ears.

I haven’t finished exporting the last few files, but there are about 2,100 discs taking up 125 GB in the “Records to Sell” folder of audio files. There are only 1,700 or so entries in the “For Sale” spreadsheet, though, plus about 100 45s, so I suppose I reclaimed 300ish LPs and 12 inches from the sale stacks after I’d already made the copies.

I bring all of this up because I ripped the last record today. Not the last record I own, but the last one I don’t want to own. Ask me what a Norman Luboff Choir record sounds like. I can’t put it in your hands, but I can play you the copy I made once when I had everything better to listen to.

The last record was better than a Luboff jawn, at least, and it forecasts a pleasant future for the ripping of the records I’m keeping. Here’s Mitch Ryder’s version of “You Are My Sunshine.”