VINYL - Willie Nelson "The Sound In Your Mind"

I just had a crazy dream which I absolutely blame on Tamaranorbust and Jeff Gordinier. And on all the cold medicine I've been having to take this week. In it, my high school band teacher, who was absolutely this kind of guy, had assigned us to listen to an album side a day on vinyl and note down our thoughts on it for something we had to hand in at the end of the year. For my first album side I chose Willie Nelson's The Sound in Your Mind off of which the song in the [VINYL] video embedded above was a single, which somehow had transported itself into my parents' record collection in that way things do in dreams (in real life, I don't think my parents ever had any Willie Nelson -- even before his braids and tax problems, he wasn't really their style. Just a hippie who played country instead of psychedelic rock). I woke up really, really wanting to do my band homework!

Alas, I don't have a turntable or any vinyl anymore. I have plenty of vices taking up plenty of space in my house, but analog audio collecting hasn't ever been one of them. But then I remembered how the world's favorite jukebox, YouTube, features rather a lot of videos like this one, of someone playing an analog vinyl favorite with the camera just focused on the turntable. It's a whole thing that I've only peripherally noticed and appreciated as a sort of protest against Mp3s, which my readers are all pretty much the sort of people who know are compressed to hell and sound terrible compared even to audio CDs, which themselves sound pretty awful compared to vinyl, but yannow.

Anyway, so I really liked the idea of a time-compressed version of that band homework (not sure how many of us have time to listen to a whole album side every day as busy grown-ups), so I thought of doing it this way, and blogging it, for a while, just as an experiment.

Furthermore, rather than impose just my tastes on everybody, I thought maybe I'd open up the floor to suggestions for tracks to include this way. Maybe if it turns out to be something I like I'll spin it off as a separate blog, but for now, just think of it as another KateOfMind.

Hook up your computer to the best speakers you've got in the house (me, I've got some Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, which aren't exactly my brothaman's giant vintage Monsoons, but have always served this non-audiophile's purpose well enough) and give this tune a spin.